


make my happiness (i will make yours)

by veterization



Series: fluff verse [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, M/M, Travel, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 13:44:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6987448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veterization/pseuds/veterization
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter and Stiles fly to South America for Cora and Lydia's wedding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	make my happiness (i will make yours)

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as just a travel story, then very rapidly transitioned into a wedding story with little bits of airplane fun sprinkled in. This story easily works independently from the other pieces in this verse, and the others don't need to be read to understand this one.

"I'm white and rich. This shouldn't be happening."

"You know, when you talk like that," Stiles says dryly, "I'm almost glad you're being randomly checked by security."

He leans on his carry-on suitcase handle, watching as Peter is instructed to lift his arms, part his feet, spin around, take off his belt, and generally be maneuvered around like he's participating in a Simon Says game. 

"Dance the polka," Stiles interjects, grinning. "Hop on one leg."

"Shut up, Stiles."

He cackles. As if he could ever shut up at a time like this. There are few people Peter will actually listen to and go as far as to obey, and on that extremely short list is the TSA, much to Stiles' delight. He watches as the agent waves his scanner around each of Peter's limbs until he's satisfied, giving Peter the go ahead to get back into his shoes and grab his things.

"That was a complete waste of time," Peter grumbles, slapping his watch back on his wrist. "Do I look like the kind of person who's plotting to blow up an entire airplane?"

"Yes," Stiles says, because Peter's face has never exactly screamed Trustworthy Good Person. The only hitch in that particular line of thinking is that what the TSA don't know is that Peter would never orchestrate a destructive plan in which he was also inevitably involved and taken down as a side effect of his evil plan.

"I'm going to be writing a lengthy review about the staff at this airport," Peter is saying, aggressively looping his belt buckle back into his pants. "We could've missed our flight."

Stiles sighs. He puts a halting hand on Peter's chest as he gets up. "Are you going to be like this the rest of the day?" he asks. "I need to know if I should take my sleeping pill now or when I'm on the plane."

"Don't test me, Stiles."

Stiles watches as he stomps his way over to where his duffel bag and shoes ended up after sliding through the scanner, kneeling to the floor to slip them on. Even the line of his back seems taut with stress, his shoulders stiff.

"I get it, okay?" Stiles says. "You're worried about seeing them all again."

"Who?"

"Your family. And Lydia. And that they'll still hate you and you won't get along. And that it'll end up ruining the wedding and you'll never be invited to another family event again."

"That's not true."

"I know it is, but we can pretend it isn't if you want," Stiles suggests. Peter's shoulders don't relax, nothing about him relaxes, and Stiles realizes he maybe ought to try a different approach.

"Hey," Stiles murmurs, grabbing Peter's elbow and pulling him closer. Peter steps forward willingly, and Stiles plants a slow, chaste kiss on his lips. "It's fine. I'll be there. And no offense, but I need the next ten hours to be about me."

"Naturally."

"You know how much I hate airplanes."

Peter knows. This isn’t the first trip they’ve taken together, and it probably won't be the last, which means that Peter is both familiar with Stiles' high-maintenance travel needs and better attend to them if he wants to be sitting next to Stiles on airplanes in the future. This vacation is, admittedly, a little longer than any of the ones they've taken before. Capping in at right around twelve hours from California to Chile, it'll be a marvel if Stiles even still wants to see Peter's face by the time they land.

Everything about this trip feels a little more tedious than it should, tediousness that, should he be traveling alone, Stiles probably wouldn't be experiencing. A truth he simply had to accept when he started dating Peter is just that Peter, no matter where he goes, will be difficult to bring there and will most likely start a ruckus of the a) emotional, b) physical, c) legal, or d) familial fashion. He’s like a badly behaved pet Stiles still takes everywhere with him even though there are _no animals allowed_ signs everywhere.

This particular occasion is Lydia and Cora's wedding, held down in South America on the beaches of Santiago. Packing alone had been a nightmare. Peter had vetoed all four and a half suits (the half being part of a larger story) Stiles had in his closet that he was prepared to bring on the trip on the account of them being too cheap or too outdated or too loud until finally, Peter had volunteered Stiles wear a few of his. Then he very nearly forgot to pack his swimming trunks, had to turn around when they were on the highway to grab the medication that had slipped his mind to bring along, and ultimately still left behind more than he had planned to, like his speech for the rehearsal dinner scribbled on four notecards currently magnetized to the fridge.

"We should've turned back for that speech," Stiles laments as they stroll their way over to their gate. "My mind's not going to remember it all."

"Relax. If anybody really cared, they would've asked you to give your speech on the wedding day, not the rehearsal dinner."

"Not a helpful comment." Stiles sees a tiny Starbucks on the right and grabs Peter’s arm. “Hey, do you think we have time to get some coffee?”

“No,” Peter says, seizing his hand and pulling him firmly away from the temptation. “And the last thing you need is caffeine. You should sleep on the flight.”

"Fine. Do you think we have time to find a bar and get a shot of cheap booze?"

"No," Peter insists, because as usual, he's intent on making life harder for Stiles, which would really be more bearable if Stiles was above a blood alcohol level that would allow him to legally drive. "Do you have your ticket? Have you already lost it?"

"Jeez, I have it right here," Stiles says, pulling it out of his back pocket—except wait, that's the receipt for the parking. "Hold on." He lets go of Peter's hand, digging into the front pocket of his suitcase. "Just a second." He's just about to slip into panic mode when something occurs to him. He narrows his eyes at Peter. "You have my ticket, don't you?"

Peter shrugs, then as expected, pulls both their plane tickets out of his pocket. "I do. I just like watching you..." He smiles. "Squirm."

"Fuck you," Stiles says. "Get your kicks out now before we get on the plane, please." He snatches his ticket out of Peter's hand. "If you try to get a rise out of me during turbulence I'm going to urinate in your skull."

He gets a funny look for that comment from the security guard manning the gate entrance, which Stiles takes as his much-needed reminder that he's in an airport and really should keep the threats at a minimum if he doesn't want to be tackled to the ground and aggressively checked for weapons before this trip is over. He gives the guy a broad smile and hands over his ticket, at which point the guard scans it and lets him through, Peter next.

"Has dating you made me macabre?" Stiles asks, pulling his carry-on along behind himself as they look for an empty seat. Most of them are taken, even though plenty of people are glued to the wall outlets, practically queueing up for a chance to plug in a computer or a mini fridge or a karaoke machine. So much for charging his phone before take-off.

"You've always been a little colorful with your language, if that's what you're referring to," Peter says. "I seem to recall your fondness for telling people you were going to stick mountain-ash-coated blunt objects up their asses once upon a time."

"Wow," Stiles says, also remembering that. "Maybe I've always been a little twisted."

"You are. Which is, I believe, exactly why we work so well together."

"That's why, huh?" Stiles asks dryly. He points to two vacant seats at the end of the gate, hustling toward them. He doesn't know why he's so eager to sit down in a hard, uncomfortable chair when he's soon going to be sitting in a hard, uncomfortable chair for an entire flight, but standing just doesn't seem like a viable option. He sits down, relishing in the fact that he can still comfortably stretch his legs out in front of himself.

"There are other reasons too, don't get me wrong."

"Do my dick sucking skills make the list?"

"Of course," Peter says, settling into the seat next to Stiles and tucking his duffel bag between his legs. "Who would I be to ignore natural talent?"

Stiles chuckles, then lets his head drift over to Peter's shoulder for a moment's calm. He can't help but wish the entire behemoth of a flight was already over, that he would already be in sunny Santiago ready for a wedding, but instead he's here, in an airplane terminal, watching all his fellow passengers get a few last good minutes out of their electronic devices before boarding and already feeling preemptively drained. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” Stiles says.

“Why? So you have someone to throw up on during take-off?”

“I was going to say so I have someone to sleep on, but you know what? Yours is better.”

Just as he’s about to pull his legs up and make himself a little more comfortable on Peter’s shoulder, the gate’s intercom comes to life and tells everybody to have their tickets ready for boarding, and that Zone A and B should start lining up at the door. Stiles looks at his ticket. Zone H.

“We would’ve had time for coffee,” Stiles says, tucking the ticket back into the pocket of his sweatshirt. “All the first-classers take forever to get on the plane.” He clears his throat, adding a lofty, accented lilt to it. “ _Reginald, do you have the gold-encrusted suitcases? And have you already asked if they’re carrying wine imported from the French Alps made on the plane? Award-winning horses stomp on the grapes until they’re perfect, Reginald._ ”

“Gilded,” Peter says.

“What?”

“Gold-encrusted. The word you’re looking for is gilded.”

Stiles picks his head off of Peter’s shoulder. “I was doing a bit, Peter. You’re supposed to laugh, not nitpick.”

“Ha, ha,” Peter says with the kind of dryness that could dehydrate an ocean.

“Zone C,” the intercom says, and Stiles rubs his temples. It’s going to be a long trip.

\--

The airplane has what seems about to be ten crying babies, fifteen grown men who are acting like babies because they either a) don't have the window seat, b) can't fit their industrial-sized carry-on into the overhead bin, or c) are displeased with the movie selection of the in-flight entertainment, and one woman who Stiles had seen in the airport wheeling around a cooler labeled _HUMAN ORGANS_ he had really been hoping wasn't going to end up on their flight.

"T-minus twelve hours," Stiles murmurs to himself as he shuffles along the tuna can of a plane waiting to reach his designated row, wishing all the while that he had taken his sleeping pill while he was sitting in the gate and let Peter carry him on here bridal style.

They squeeze into their seats, Stiles nearly headbutted by the chair in front of him when it arches back just as Stiles is bending forward to rifle through the magazines, already starting to feel restless. The plane is still on the Tarmac. The plane hasn't even moved yet. This isn't great.

"You know," Stiles says while wrangling the packaged pillow and blanket out from underneath himself, ripping the plastic open, "I once read that these things don't get replaced. They just refold and rewrap the old ones."

"Delightful," Peter says. "Any other disgusting facts about airplanes you'd like to share now that we're sitting in an airplane?"

"They don't clean the water tanks," Stiles says. "And these tray tables don't ever get wiped down."

"You should take that sleeping pill now," Peter says, already pulling his industrial-sized soundproof headphones out of his bag and slotting them around his head. Stiles gets the message, and isn't particularly charmed by it.

"Hey," he says, tugging on Peter's elbow. "No electronics during take-off. You'll blow us all up."

"Wouldn't that be something," Peter says as he secures the headphones in place. 

"Turn it off," Stiles says. "Not funny, Peter. Safety is never funny."

Peter spares him a look of extreme judgement, which means that he's still listening to him and those headphones are totally for show. "Haven't you seen that Mythbusters episode?"

"What?"

"It's complete bullshit. Electronics have no effect on the plane. They just occasionally interfere with the pilot's radio signals."

Just then, like an angel descending to earth to take Stiles' side and keep him from having to resort to tattle-taling, a stewardess walks down the aisle and says, smiling at Peter all the while, "Electronics off for take-off, sir. Thank you."

"Hah," Stiles says.

"Please," Peter scoffs, pulling the headphones down to his neck. "My listening to The Weeknd isn't going to take our plane into the Pacific."

"Are all our lives worth testing your little theory?"

"Stop being dramatic," Peter says, but flicks his iPod off anyway and leans his head back in his seat, closing his eyes. Stiles knows what's on that iPod, the extent of it being R&B and generally slow and syrupy songs one could easily fuck to, and can't imagine spending an entire plane ride bopping along to Drake.

"Hey," Stiles says. "Don't fall asleep yet. I'm going to need your help getting though take-off."

Peter sighs. He peels open one eye, looking upward, and presses the call button over their heads. Twenty seconds later, a perky woman in a neckerchief is bustling up to their seats.

"Can I get you something, sir?"

"He's going to need a ginger ale stat," Peter instructs. "Also lots of water, some extra barf bags, and anything else you can provide for someone with a hopeless case of motion sickness."

He doesn't open his eyes while he rattles off the list, leaving Stiles to squirm in his seat and apologize to the stewardess for her troubles. She doesn't seem too fazed, though, either used to brusque passengers or familiar with the plight of in-flight-nausea, because she nods and hurries down the aisle afterwards.

"She's not a concierge," Stiles tells Peter. "And what I meant is for _you_ to console me, you big asshole." He pokes him on the wrist. "Let me at least hold your hand or something."

Peter flips his palm over, ready for the taking without much complaining, and Stiles grabs onto him, already feeling a little stress-induced sweat gathering on his hands. The plane starts rolling after that, leisurely moving down the airstrip, and it feels like hours of just slow gliding on land until they finally reach a long, empty stretch of asphalt clearly designed for lift-off.

The stewardess comes back with a can full of ginger ale and what seems like the plane's entire supply of barf bags, wishing him luck with the take-off and advising him to turn on the overhead air. Within seconds, the plane goes from inching along to zooming down the runway, picking up crazy amounts of speed, and Stiles squeezes the hell out of Peter's hand with the security of knowing that whatever injuries he inflicts on him will heal soon anyway. 

"Breathe," Peter says, popping open the ginger ale for him with his free hand. "Deep breaths. Even breaths."

Stiles listens, narrowing his month into a small circle and inhaling slow, balanced breaths. The pressure on the top of his head is nothing short of uncomfortable, and then the ground swoops out from under his feet and they're in the air, climbing, climbing, getting higher by the second.

"Remember that yoga class we went to?" Peter asks.

"How could I forget?" Stiles grits out through his teeth, still trying to regulate his oxygen intake and focus on little else. "You were the teacher's pet, showing off your flexibility to every person who looked."

"I was going to refer to how we began the class, going over all those breathing techniques. To breathe from your core."

"That's what I'm _doing_."

Peter tsks, disbelieving, and puts his palm flat on Stiles' stomach. "You're not." He presses into his belly. "Push against my hand when you breathe."

Stiles feels silly doing it, like a small child who needs to be distracted away from having a tantrum, but listens anyway and follows instructions. The effort it takes to push against Peter's hand does actually keep his mind off of the fact that he's in a giant flying soda can trying to climb out of the earth's atmosphere, which is ultimately nicer than what the alternative would've been: panicking into a paper bag while picturing a slew of worst case scenarios that all end with the plane nosediving into the ground and Stiles never knowing what it feels like to see Twenty One Pilots in concert.

Eventually, the pressure fades and Stiles' ears pop back into normalcy, leaving nothing behind but the loud humming of the aircraft. Stiles dares to look out and sees nothing but skies, the wisps of clouds, the stretching of blue, and with the take-off successfully over, Stiles lets himself relax. He then realizes that he's going to be sitting in this god-awful uncomfortable seat for an unbelievably long time, and suddenly throwing up in his lap is no longer his concern, but his incipient boredom is.

He looks over at Peter, who's flipping casually through the Sky Mall looking at bed frames, and decides to bother him for entertainment.

"So since we have some time to kill," Stiles starts. "Any crazy relatives I should be wary of at the wedding?" He chuckles. "Or do you have that particular quota filled in your family?"

"You mean aside from the ones who were all savagely murdered?" Peter says, closing the Sky Mall catalogue with a dry thud. "No. I don't think there'll be anybody new there for you to meet."

"Damn. I would've loved to hear embarrassing stories about your childhood from a gossipy cousin."

"No such cousin exists."

"You sound awfully relieved about that," Stiles says. "What stories from your youth are you hiding from me? Were you an ugly child? Did you ruin Santa Claus for all the other kids?"

"You'll never know," Peter says.

"You did, didn't you? You were that asshole who told everybody their parents were Santa?"

"I was a lovely child," Peter says thinly.

"Sounds like an unreliable narrator talking to me," Stiles says. "Can you define _lovely_ for me, please?"

Peter takes that moment as his cue to slide the headphones back over his head, securing them in place to block Stiles out. He opens the Sky Mall again, flipping through page after page of gaudy lawn decorations. Now and again Stiles sees him dog-ear a page, and Stiles amuses himself by trying to figure out what ridiculously tacky item he finds charming enough to mark each time he does so. It’s not bad for entertainment, at least until Stiles realizes that there’s a TV in the seat in front of him.

\--

Stiles watches half a documentary about orcas, plays two games of solitaire, and marathons Friends episodes in what feels like five hours but is actually just one. No one's come around with complimentary snacks yet and the blanket on Stiles' lap is already starting to get scratchy, so the trip is off to a wonderful start.

"Hey," Stiles whispers, elbowing Peter when another set of Friends credits roll past the tiny screen in front of him. Peter's leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed and headphones back around his ears, completely tuning out the world, but he lifts them away after Stiles' stubborn prodding.

"What?"

Stiles leans in. "You wanna get busy in the bathroom?"

"The bathroom measures at no larger than two by two feet," Peter says. "I can hardly do any of my moves in that amount of constriction."

"Oh, forget your moves," Stiles says, not thinking, and then realizes he may have poked Peter's sensitive spot as he noticeably bristles. He'll compliment his moves later. "It's sexy. It's forbidden."

"It's smelly and frowned upon," Peter dismisses. "To say nothing of the germs."

"C'mon, sex is already smelly and frowned upon. And you're an _animal_. Not just figuratively." He lowers his voice. "You're a werewolf. And normally you're full of sexual fire."

"Not when I am rationally aware of the fact that there is a high chance you'll throw up on us both while I fuck you."

The unfortunate thing is that Stiles has no strong rebuttal to that. He draws the line of exhibitionism right before handjobs under the airplane blankets pops up, and isn't quite horny enough to suggest that quite yet. Just one stern look from a passing flight attendant and Stiles can already imagine the slow, agonizing death he would die of embarrassment if he was caught suspiciously moving underneath that awful blue blanket. With the bathroom, there's a door and a loud barrier of noise and there's a whole _club_ devoted to having sex in airplane lavatories, and dammit, Stiles wants to be a part of it. He never had time to participate in clubs in high school.

The dinner carts coming down the aisle distracts Stiles from his whining, instead diverting his attention to his growling stomach. When did airplanes stop serving peanuts? Stiles needs an appetizer now and again.

“Okay, so,” Stiles says, pulling his legs up to the chair and crossing them. He nudges Peter with his knee. “What about on a boat?”

“What?”

“Would you sleep with me on a boat?”

“Depends on the size of the boat.” Peter frowns, removing his headphones from one ear. “Yacht? Cruise ship? Kayak?”

“Sex on a yacht sounds hot, admit it,” Stiles says. “You know. Following the motion of the ocean with our bodies.” He winks, rolling his hand to imitate the waves of the sea.

“I would do sex on a boat,” Peter says. “I’d also do sex on a train if we had a large enough train car.”

“What about sex on a _private jet_?”

“Chicken salad or vegetarian lasagna?” someone suddenly asks from right next to him, and Stiles nearly jumps out of his seat, almost forgetting that there are people around him and it isn’t just him and Peter talking shop while sitting in bed. There’s a stewardess in the aisle holding two separate plastic containers for Stiles to choose from.

They both sound better than they look or taste, Stiles knows this. He goes with the vegetarian option just to make sure he doesn’t end up eating a questionable meat-byproduct that someone’s cooking up in a secret lab in the cockpit, wishing all the while that he had eaten while they were still on the ground. He’s hungry now and has no choice but to eat lukewarm, soggy lasagna, after which he officially decides he’s done with Plane Time. He pops his sleeping pill in his mouth just in time to finish up his plastic-wrapped brownie and start drifting off right when the trash bags start coming through the aisles. He envies Peter, who was able to eat that chicken without any problem and looks perfectly comfortable in his seat, not busy daydreaming about solid ground and the earth and dirt like Stiles is.

He was so sure that Peter would be the high-maintenance complainer while traveling. The last time they flew together, Stiles was expecting griping around every corner, about the seat size, the lack of cuisine in the snacks, the loud children, the stuffy air. Instead Stiles was the one fidgeting and twisting in his seat, moaning about when the flight would finally end and when he could exit this godforsaken torture cylinder already. Overdramatizing—as Peter called it at the time—feels awfully embarrassing when Peter, the undisputed king of unnecessary theatrics, is cool, calm, and collected.

Still, Peter hasn’t mentioned it during the entire flight. Either he’s unbothered by Stiles’ bellyaching or his headphones are _really_ soundproof, but Stiles does appreciate that he’s not being told to reel it in. It’s sweet when he really considers it; Peter complains about so many other things. He thinks about that with a blissfully hazy mind that’s starting to react to the sleeping pill, and the last thing he remembers is his head lolling against the nearest soft surface—is that Peter’s arm?—and tuning out all of the nightmarish sounds and sights of the plane.

\--

Stiles is jostled out of a restless sleep on top of his tray table by turbulence that feels like he's inside a portable toilet being rocked around by big-muscled bullies. The plane is moving, shifting and swinging around, and with nothing but a dark black night streaming in through the windows, Stiles isn’t even sure what’s going on outside. The nausea rises in his stomach not long after that, and Stiles moans, gripping the arm rests for support.

"Getting sick?" Peter asks, immediately brandishing a complimentary paper barf bag. It has Feel Better! printed on its side which is the kind of nice detail Stiles would take the time to appreciate if he felt a little less like the world was quaking under his feet. The fact that his feet are not actually on the world at all but rather in midair trapped in a germ-infused tin can that can fly is probably not something he should be thinking about, but there it is.

"Thanks," Stiles says, taking the bag and holding it over his nose. He breathes in and out, listening to the paper crinkle each time. "And yes." The plane rocks again, left and right and up and down, and Stiles reaches for Peter's forearm. "Are we in turbulence?"

"Hardly. The stewardesses are still walking around, so the danger isn't real," Peter says.

"How reassuring," Stiles says into the bag. Behind him, there are people laughing a few rows back every time the plane lurches like every jolt and bump is a roller coaster's dip. That kind of positive outlook on the world and all its trouble is sickening Stiles. He reaches for his carry-on bag only to realize he never actually remembered to pack his—

"Here you go," Peter says suddenly, pulling anti-nausea tablets out of his pocket like a magic trick.

Stiles pulls the bag away from his mouth. "How'd you get these?"

"I packed them before we left. Figured it was highly likely you'd need them."

Stiles' stomach swoops, possibly but not necessarily thanks to the airplane. He takes the rattling box from Peter.

"Have you been rummaging around my medicine cabinet?" he grumbles.

"Only for research." Peter lifts his duffel out from the foot room and unzips a side compartment, where an inhaler, three bottles of pills, and nasal spray sit. "Just so I'm prepared for an emergency."

Stiles pulls out one of the bottles; it's the anxiety medication he's used to taking. "A Stiles-related emergency?"

"Well, it's not like _I_ need them."

Peter zips the bag back up and slides it underneath himself again, then taps pointedly on the anti-nausea box. Stiles opens it and slides a tablet out, popping it into his mouth. He sucks it into the side of his mouth and says, "Is this creepy or sweet?" which should probably be Peter's motto.

"Considerate," Peter answers, choosing his own description. "Nothing creepy about it. I'm just trying to avoid another Chicago."

"Don't bring that up now."

Chicago was an unfortunate incident in which Stiles and Peter flew together for the first time—the only time until now—to Illinois to spend a weekend enjoying deep dish pizza and good theater. All this fun, however, was prefaced by Stiles vomiting over Peter's shoes during take-off. It was unfortunate for everybody involved, including the people in front and behind their row and everybody who had the misfortune of walking by to scurry to the bathroom. He’d rather not relive that now.

He chews on the lozenge, the flavor like a sweet lemon on his tongue. He pulls himself off the fold-down table and instead leans his head on Peter's shoulder, finding a softness on his shirt that he didn't on the tray.

"I'm just going to use you as a giant pillow," Stiles lets him know. "Hope you don't mind."

The plane rocks again, like it's one roll into storm clouds away from crumbling into a thousand metal pieces, and Stiles is going to go plunging into the ethers and that flotation device under his seat isn't going to do a thing. Stiles grinds his teeth down onto that sharp flavor of lemon, closing his eyes and groping along the armrest until he finds Peter's hand.

"I'm going to use this too," he says, squeezing Peter’s palm.

"That's fine," Peter says.

He squeezes Stiles' hand back, completely uncaring of the death grip Stiles has on his knuckles, and grabs the book he has tucked into the chair pocket and goes back about his business of reading, his free hand holding it open. Stiles watches with one peeped eye, wondering how on earth anyone can read at a time like this when any moment the entire plane could go careening into the galaxy. He opens the other eye, trying to focus on a single line, the dim light switched on above helping to illuminate the page. 

_The nightingale’s song was then the only voice of the hour: in listening to it, I again wept. Mr. Rochester sat quiet, looking at me gently and seriously. Some time passed before he spoke; he at last said—_

"Is this Jane Eyre?" Stiles asks, disbelieving. Stiles always assumed that Peter's bookshelf was full of murder how-tos and ancient tomes passed down in the family detailing werewolf lore and biographies of prolific serial killers, not romantic period drama classics.

"It is," Peter says. "Aren't you trying to sleep?"

"Why are you reading Jane Eyre?" Stiles asks. "Did you steal this off someone?"

"I packed it myself, thank you very much," Peter says, thumbs flexing where they're keeping the pages in place. "I'm a fan of Brontë, you know that."

Stiles did most certainly not know that, but his life is infinitely better now that he does. He reads another line— _”Come to my side, Jane, and let us explain and understand one another.”_ —and chuckles.

"You big old sap," Stiles mumbles around his grin, reaching up to pinch Peter's cheek. "You're just a huge romantic, aren't you? Are you going to prepare candlelit walks through the park for our anniversary? Maybe make me a mixtape or two?"

"I make you CDs all the time," Peter points out, and yeah, Stiles probably shouldn't be too surprised that Peter's a fan of the romantic side of literature, what with his love of grand, sweeping gestures and the resulting praise. He readjusts his cheek on Peter's shoulder, looking for a comfortable spot, and keeps reading.

_”I will never again come to your side: I am torn away now, and cannot return.”_

"You should go back to sleep if you can," Peter suggests.

"I can't. Those sleeping pills—I'm pretty sure I just packed placebos."

"You didn't." Peter sighs, delicately flipping a page. "If you don't sleep, jet lag's going to turn you into a whiny little brat."

"Thanks," Stiles mutters. He realizes then that the plane stopped shaking sometime between Jane refusing to talk to Mr. Rochester and her falling into his arms, the turbulence fading away.

He sits up in his seat and looks around, and even that makes him feel groggy, like he's moving underwater. There's something about a plane that just makes everything feel heavier, stickier, warmer, but he doesn't seem to be only one affected: most of the plane is sleeping, pillows stuffed next to their heads and scratchy blankets thrown over their laps. Somewhere from first class, there's soft laughter, but that's the only sound breaking through the plane's humming.

He turns back around, rolling his shoulders and deciding to give into the sluggishness. He settles himself back onto Peter's shoulder, resigning himself to the cricks in his neck he's sure to wake up with, and lets his eyes drift shut.

"What do you think the wedding's going to look like?" he murmurs, curling his hand around Peter's arm. "The hotel's big. I looked it up online."

"Humid. It'll definitely be humid."

"I think it's romantic, getting married by the beach," Stiles says. He listens to Peter turn another page, to the sound of the shifting paper. "It's indoors, though. Don't think Lydia wanted to tempt the weather gods."

"It's not rainy season."

"You never know. Life can be funny like that." Stiles yawns. Talking himself to sleep always reminds him of nights at camp, how he and Scott would dare each other to stay up all night and they never made it past midnight. "Aren't you going to sleep too? I'm not the only one who turns into a little bitch when he's tired."

"How charming," Peter says, but hey, if you can't handle it, don't dish it out. "At the end of the chapter, I will."

"Spoiler alert, she leaves him but they end up together," Stiles says around another yawn. "I read it in high school."

"If this was my first time reading," Peter vows, "I would find an imaginative way to punish you for that."

"Oooh, punish me anyway," Stiles says, biting down on Peter's shoulder through his shirt. "In the bathroom, maybe?"

"Let the airplane sex go," Peter advises him, then slings an arm around Stiles' shoulders to pull him closer, letting him nuzzle into the curve of his arm. "It isn't going to happen."

"I'll wear you down eventually," Stiles promises, but drifts off before he can get to work on that.

\--

Stiles wakes up to the soft sound of the morning hustling and bustling around him in the plane. Daylight is streaming into the windows, tinkling laughter is floating around him, and stewardesses are pushing squeaky carts full of packaged breakfasts down the aisle, all signs that it’s time to get up even though he feels like he’ll need another thirty hours of sleep just to properly catch up and no longer feel as sluggishly frothy. Above him, the intercom is on and the pilot is saying _forty-five minutes until landing_.

He feels awful. Waking up on planes is never a refreshing, enjoyable experience—his mouth is dry and there's a line of tension up the muscles in his back from sleeping like a pretzel in his chair, everything about his body feeling different than it does on ground. He swallows, waiting for his ears to pop, and pulls himself up from where he's still tucked against Peter's side. He tilts his neck left and right, looking to crack a few bones back into place.

"That shoulder of yours," Stiles grouses, rubbing his cheek, "is definitely not a first class pillow."

"Morning," Peter says, sounding disgustingly rested. "Nice bedhead, sweetheart."

"Ugh," Stiles says, trying to stretch but finding he doesn't have the room. He groans, feeling restless as ever stuffed in his sardine can of a seat. "I love waking up to immediate nausea."

"Deep breaths," Peter says, which is the kind of blasé advice only people who aren't afflicted with motion sickness can be blinded enough to believe will actually help. "Try to keep it together. Food's coming."

"Wonderful. You know how much I love airplane cuisine," Stiles says, seriously considering going back to the sleep, or at least trying. He runs his hands through his hair and tries to tame the bedraggled mop it's become, and then takes his shrink-wrapped scrambled eggs and packet of applesauce as the stewardess comes through with her cart. Even without his lurching stomach, he can't imagine finding the food too appetizing, but Peter bullies him into eating it and putting something in his stomach.

"There's no point," Stiles says as he, at Peter's insistence, finishes his applesauce. "I'm going to throw it all back up when he land." He reaches for the barf bag he stuffed under his seat a few hours ago, holding onto it like a security blanket. "How did you sleep? Did you hear that baby with the lovely falsetto voice?"

"I slept wonderfully," Peter tells him, and he looks it, all shining skin and clear eyes. Stiles is currently probably rocking the world's darkest under-eye bags and queasiest green face, and that makes him hate Peter just a little bit. "Didn't the sleeping pill help?"

"Not for very long," Stiles moans. "I kept waking up because the plane was shaking or somebody's kid was crying or I almost fell out of my tiny ass seat and you know what? Every time I did, I looked over and you were passed out. _Passed out_." Stiles rubs at his eyes. "Why weren't you waking up? What happened to your super sharp werewolf senses?"

"They're still intact if there's danger afoot. Emphasis on _danger_."

"Asshole," Stiles mutters under his breath. "We could go crashing down at any moment, you know."

"I always forget how _shining_ your mood is in the morning." Peter sighs long-sufferingly, reaching for the call button, and Stiles seizes his wrist a second before he presses it. "What? I was going to ask for coffee to get some caffeine in you. Lighten that sunny disposition."

"Stop bothering the flight attendants," Stiles mutters. It's already a miracle they aren't being served sneezer meals thanks to Peter's continuous summoning of the stewardesses, which now that he thinks about it, could've easily already happened. "I'm _fine_ and I don't need coffee. My back just feels like I switched spines with a whale and my mouth feels like you stuffed a sock in it while I was sleeping."

"I guarantee you, from the way you were drooling, it would not have stayed in."

Stiles rubs his hands up and down his face a few times, slowly exhaling. He'll cheer up soon enough once they land and he gets to shake off everything about this smelly shake shack and get back on the ground; Peter's mood, on the other hand, will only decline as the day goes on. He's been going through hot and cold mood swings for a while now, always waffling between what Stiles assumes are contrasting attitudes of What If Everybody At The Wedding Hates Me and Fuck Them All.

"Was I really drooling?" Stiles asks, scrubbing by his mouth.

"Like a dog," Peter says.

Peter’s already packing up their things, pushing all the stuff that used to be neatly organized into their carry-on that somehow got distributed all over their tiny section of the plane in the last twelve hours back into their bags. Most of the stuff is Peter’s, like his books and his iPod and his gourmet snacks, all things that couldn’t be sacrificed so Stiles could take his pillow along. God, does he miss his pillow. All he had last night was the incredibly scratchy one provided by the airplane that feels like it was filled with porcupine quills, so no wonder he doesn’t feel rested.

He watches Peter stuff Jane Eyre into the side pocket of the duffel and chuckles. “You know,” he says. “You and Mr. Rochester? Totally the same person.”

Peter frowns at him. “Pardon?”

Stiles holds up his hand to start counting on his fingers. “Total grumps. Bad at relationships. Badly burned in an arson fire. Ultimately ends up with the much younger protagonist.”

Peter’s frown deepens. “Bad at relationships?” He shakes his head. “Are you Jane in this delusional comparison?”

“Yeah. Although I’m not sure who everybody else is.” Stiles doesn’t even want to think about who Mr. Rochester’s first wife is here, or, _hell_ , Blanche Ingram. Why hadn’t he thought of this during the start of the flight? He could’ve passed a good hour or two thinking about this and who would be whom.

The pilot crackles back on the intercom at that moment and the Fasten Seatbelts sign flickers on overhead, reminding everybody that they'll begin their descent shortly and should get back to their seats. Stiles groans, and without even having to ask, Peter's hand finds his on the armrest and slides their fingers together.

"Squeeze to your heart's content," Peter says. "Do you want to look out the window?"

"If you want me to throw up, sure," Stiles says.

"Seeing all the roofs from this high up is quite enjoyable," Peter says, like Stiles has never once used Google Earth and experimented around with the zooming. He knows what a damn bird's eye view is and doesn't need to see it through clouds he's currently swaying in like an unsteady drunkard to get a look at it firsthand.

"Just stop talking," Stiles says, closing his eyes and clutching Peter's hand. Every now and again there's this great lurch of the plane that feels like the moment when you forget about the last step on the staircase and for that one frozen second you feel nothing but the air beneath you when there should be floor and you think you're going to fall flat on your face, and Stiles is more than ready to feel the wheels slam on the ground and end this experience.

Over through the first class curtains, somebody laughs again. What the hell are they doing up there? Playing a giant game of Twister while Stiles is here contemplating the statistics of plane landing fatalities?

"Next time," Stiles says through his clenched teeth, "can we go first class?"

"Gladly," Peter says, like he's spent more than enough time here in the peasant cabin when he should be up ahead with His People.

"Sounds like they're having fun up there—woah." Another lurch has Stiles' stomach somersaulting around like a gymnast. "Tell me we're basically on the ground."

"If you want me to go ahead and lie—"

"Oh _God_. How high up are we still?"

“I wouldn’t recommend jumping out of the plane at this distance.”

Stiles feels his throat gurgle with foreboding. He starts breathing like he once saw during that one birthing video he ended up watching for shits and giggles—not that it was so funny anymore once he got a few minutes into it—and tries to focus on that, the rapid in and out of oxygen into his mouth. He tries to think about something—anything but the rapidly descending plane and the hopefully qualified pilot steering it—and ends up thinking about Peter reading Jane Eyre, enjoying it, rereading it again and again. It almost makes him laugh.

“Are you getting hysterical?” Peter asks. “Why are you laughing?”

“Just thinking about how you’re full of surprises,” Stiles says, chuckling. “How long did you read last night?”

“Not too long,” he says. “I wanted to get some rest too.”

“Did you at least make it to the good part,” Stiles says, then briefly stops to swallow when his ears fill with pressure and the plane swoops again. Seriously, is it doing fucking loops in the air? He continues, “where they finally get together?”

“I did,” Peter tells him. “Stopping before would’ve been unsatisfying.”

“Of course,” Stiles says, smiling. He can’t believe that this is something he never knew about Peter before, that Peter likes to read Victorian romance novels and enjoys the bits where the couples fall in love. Is this a new development? Has Peter grown a taste for romance ever since Stiles has been romancing him? “Are you glad they end up together?”

“I am,” Peter says. “Some people deserve second chances, don’t you think?”

“Oh, you are _so_ Mr. Rochester. The only difference is that instead of keeping some batshit ex-wife in your attic your big bad secret is that you used to kill people.” Stiles pauses. “Well. Unless there’s something you want to tell me?”

“There are no ex-wives in my attic, or anywhere else in my apartment, for that matter.”

“Well, I’m glad. If you had two big bad secrets, that might be a bit much.”

The wheels smacking into the concrete jolt Stiles’ eyes open. He has a death grip on Peter’s hand, his fingers nearly turning purple from the way Stiles is squeezing him, and he lets go in time to see the white imprint of his grip on Peter’s palm. He’ll apologize for that later, once the plane is no longer rocketing down the runway so fast Stiles can easily imagine sparks flying up from the wheels, and it finally screeches to a long, nerve-wracking halt. Stiles lets out a breath he’s been holding in.

“Hey, we’re alive,” Stiles says.

“We’ll be back in one of these soon enough,” Peter says, already unbuckling his seatbelt. “We might still die on the flight home.”

“Thanks for that,” Stiles says, flexing his hand out while the plane rolls slowly, , toward the airport.

\--

"I never want to be on an airplane again," Stiles groans as he hauls his carry on behind him as he shuffles, single-file, along in the tiny chute connecting the plane to the airport. His limbs feel like they've been embalmed and he has a throbbing headache all courtesy of the lovely side effects of air travel, and the world has yet to stop swaying like he's still in the air. "And yes, I know we'll be on one again in less than a week. I'm just thrilled."

Next to him, Peter is moving at the pace of an old man with dislocated ankles who lost his cane. It’s a bit strange, especially considering that the last time Stiles was in an airport with Peter, Peter was the type of obnoxious person to power walk and push his way past everybody else just to get to baggage claim first. Peter is not a follower—at least, not usually, which is why his sudden inability to walk at an average human’s pace is a little strange. Half the plane pushes past them on the Jetway and Peter doesn’t even mind, too busy fiddling with his duffel and inching along to seem to mind. 

"We're literally going to miss the wedding at this rate," Stiles says, waiting for Peter to pick up the pace. "What's wrong with you?"

"We're not missing anything. Calm down."

"If we calm down any more we'll be moving like snails."

Despite Stiles' complaints, by the time they reach baggage claim, mostly everybody from their plane is still piled around the carousel waiting for their luggage. Stiles sees the Devil Baby that kept him from getting a good night's rest as they find an empty spot to stand and watch in, and even it, after a night of screeching, no less, looks perky and awake. Stiles hates everybody on this goddamn plane.

"We have to get better luggage," Stiles says as he watches black nondescript suitcase after black nondescript suitcase glide by. "Something you can easily identify. What do you think about polka dots?"

"No," Peter says.

"Try to be open-minded, would you?" Stiles tells him, but when he looks at him, he finds that Peter looks rather grumpy. "You all right?"

"Fine," Peter says, but he looks otherwise.

Stiles is pretty sure he knows what this is about. After the excruciatingly slow march out of the plane, Stiles is starting to put the pieces together.

"Listen," Stiles says, winding his arms around Peter's neck and leaning his chin on Peter's shoulder. Peter still smells of his aftershave, which is a welcome scent after smelling nothing but the inside of a Boeing for hours. "Nobody's going to hate you. This is a wedding, not a roast."

"Not to my face, maybe," Peter says.

"Okay, they might poke a bit of fun. But nobody's going to be an asshole to you," Stiles promises. "I can make sure of that if you want me to."

Peter snorts. "You're going to protect me?"

"Hey, don't make it sound so impossible," Stiles says. He strokes the nape of Peter's neck, waiting for the tension there to go away. "I'll just swoop in whenever anyone has anything nasty to say and give 'em a good ol' clock cleaning."

"Please don't. You'll hurt yourself."

" _Hey_ ," Stiles says again. "Will you just trust me? It's going to be fine."

Peter doesn't seem quite as convinced. Stiles gets where he's coming from. After living a no-regrets life in which he didn't care who he offended or who he burned for selfish gain, it must've been an uneasy transition to suddenly start caring, to have to start living out the consequences of manipulating everybody in sight. Being with Stiles didn't just include Stiles, it included all his friends, all his family, a hefty amount of who were prey to Peter's schemes in the past, and Peter had little to no experience with things like genuinely sincere apologies or gaining trust or even just maintaining long-term friendships. It was an uphill battle at first, some more forgiving than others, but even after a few years of failing to deceive, cheat, or betray anybody close to Stiles, some were still understandably wary of Peter. And for someone who thrived under attention and ultimately, being spoiled silly, having to make amends was a necessity for Peter.

And people were taking him seriously. It didn't help erase some of the doubt, however.

"If you really, really, really want to," Stiles offers, "you can stay up in the hotel room and I'll be the life of the party alone." He shrugs. "I'll call you a giant sissy for the next few years, but, you know."

"Dirty trick," Peter mutters, grabbing hold of Stiles' hip and jerking him closer. "I'm not going to _hide_. Even if I'm not quite sure that everybody at the wedding will be happy to see me."

"So what?" Stiles asks, giving Peter a quick punch in the arm. "Just because I don't want you to murder people in cold blood doesn't mean you can't give them a piece of your mind." Stiles squeezes his elbow. "And besides, it's not like you're my plus one. You got your own invitation. That means the hosts want you there, and that's all that matters."

Peter turns to him. A tiny grin seems to be growing on his face. "And you do. I'd say that matters too."

"Well, duh. Nobody wants to go to weddings alone. You end up looking like a pathetic single loser."

Peter gives Stiles a smack in the ass for that smart comment, which earns them a few dirty looks. Stiles keeps his arm wrapped around Peter, but leans in to ask, "How homophobic is Chile, by the way?"

"I'm sure we'll find out," Peter says. He tightens his arm around Stiles' hip. "Not that it matters."

"An entire devoutly religious country judging you for your lifestyle doesn't matter, but a few people at a wedding who might give you the evil eye do?"

"It's different," Peter says. "These people are strangers. Those people—they matter to you." He stops talking, eyes zeroing in on the carousel. "There's my bag."

He elbows his way to the front and heaves his suitcase off the belt, Stiles watching his backside while he does so. Now and again he's reminded of the fact that Peter, for as much of a hard skin he purports to have, has real insecurities now and again too. Sometimes Stiles wonders if Peter's afraid that one day, other people's opinions and disapproval will get to Stiles, and he'll end it with Peter. That he'll choose his friends over him. That it could be that cut and dry. It's a subtle fear, a jealousy, really, that Stiles understands even if he knows himself that it has no grounds. He has friends who may be cautious of Peter, but they're supportive too, and supporting Stiles means supporting his decisions and his feelings, which include Peter, and have for a very long time.

Stiles grabs Peter's arm when he comes back from the carousel, touching Peter's ear with his free hand. "Just so you know," he says, "we're leaving here the exact same way we came. Together." He smiles, briefly tipping their foreheads together. "So relax, okay?"

"Your confidence in that is ridiculously optimistic," Peter says, but his shoulders seem to relax a fraction of an inch.

"It's not _optimism_ ," Stiles says. "It's just a wedding. A wedding with our friends and loved ones. Basically just a glorified party with a lot of required formalwear."

"Thank you," Peter murmurs, and then shows his gratitude by skimming his teeth over the part of Stiles' ear Peter knows he likes to have bitten. "Your attempts to brighten my outlook on the situation are sweet. Illogical, but sweet."

"You're welcome. Now go get my suitcase."

He nudges Peter back over to the carousel, then gets to work on some much-needed stretches while Peter bullies his way to the front. He leans over and tries to touch his toes, arching his back, and thinks about how nice it is to have someone care about him the way Peter does, quietly, worriedly, protectively.

\--

The taxi ride from the airport to the hotel is one that's over much too fast for Stiles' liking. As sweaty, tired, and icky he feels after being crammed in an airplane for hours on end, the sights of Santiago awaken a second wind in him. He watches ancient architecture and colorful streets and active people zoom by from the cab window while Peter talks with the driver in Spanish, feeling like he’s stepped into a whole different world. Stiles heard Peter whip out his language skills not too long ago at a Spanish restaurant when he ordered their meals for them, but at the time it had felt more like a well-rehearsed attempt to both show off and impress Stiles into putting out (unnecessary, considering Stiles needed little to no coaxing to put out). Now, sitting in the back of a cab in Chile feeling warm air drift in from the slivers of open windows while Peter has a perfectly fluent chat about what Stiles can only guess is the favorable weather, Stiles is definitely a little impressed.

"You are such a show off," Stiles whispers to him, but he can't stop smiling as he does so. "What's next? You know perfect Swahili?"

"There's no harm in knowing a few languages," Peter says. He shoots Stiles a rather pompous look. "Especially when all you've ever bothered to learn is English."

"I took a semester of Latin in high school," Stiles says to defend himself.

"Ah. A dead language. How useful."

"I thought it'd be cool," Stiles says, elbowing him in the ribs. "How was I supposed to know that it wasn't going to be easy?"

"You took it to impress Lydia."

"All right, fine, yes, not that it worked," Stiles says. 

He's a bit overheated in his travel sweatshirt—namely, the most comfortable shirt he owns—by the time they pull up to the hotel, a humongous, towering building that radiates luxury. Stiles is still trying to count floor levels from the window when Peter retrieves their luggage out of the trunk and has settled the cab fare, and it isn't until he gets out of the car and breathes in the salty beach air that he realizes he's in Chile, he's about to see all his friends again, and best of all, the traveling nightmares are all over.

"This place is _sick_ ," Stiles says, nearly running into a pillar that Peter jerks him out of the way of because his head is tipped backwards and his eyes are glued to the lobby's ceiling, a vaulted, magnificent masterpiece. "I bet these rooms have _bathrobes_."

"Your standards are fairly low, aren't they?" Peter asks, seizing him by the wrist and guiding him to the check-in desk. "We have a reservation under Hale."

Stiles' eyes keep roaming while Peter talks with the receptionist, from the lush indoor plants to the marble floors to the faint, comforting scent of saltwater. He can't believe they're really here. It wasn't that long ago when Stiles thought he was going to decompose if he spent one more minute on that plane, and now he's in South America ready to see everybody again and get his beach game on.

"—no, not Derek Hale, the other Hale. Peter Hale," Peter's telling the receptionist, rapping his knuckles on the counter. He looks briefly at Stiles. "Looks like Derek already checked in, which means he didn't die a grievous death on the flight over. In case you were curious."

“That’s good to know.”

“ _Peter_ ,” Peter says again. “Not Cora. Peter, with a P.” He shoots Stiles another look. “I keep forgetting that every alive person in my family and their cousin and their dog is here.”

“Just like Christmas, isn’t it?” Stiles says, eyes still roving. There’s a fresh bouquet of flowers on the edge of the desk and there are grandiose paintings on the wall and Stiles can’t _wait_ to see what the ceremony hall looks like, what colors schemes are draped over the ceilings and what flowers are surrounding the altar.

"Stiles! Peter!"

Stiles turns around just in time to see Scott barreling toward him before he pulls Stiles into a hug, and he smells so much of the sea and fresh air and fruity cocktails instead of a stuffy airplane that Stiles thinks about never letting him go until his nostrils have forgotten what a coach-class cabin smells like.

"How was your flight?" Scott asks.

"As pleasant as flying in a dangerous tube in space could be," Stiles says. "Oh, and Peter refused to have mile high club sex with me."

"Are you really still upset about that?" Peter asks.

"Scott, seriously. Is airplane sex not hot and alluring? Or is it cramped and illegal?"

Scott's eyes dart from Stiles to Peter like he's watching a high-speed tennis match. "I don't think I should share my opinion," he says. "Glad you made it okay?"

"We made it just fine," Peter cuts in. "And we can have roomy, flexible sex later."

"Everybody's on the beach, by the way," Scott says, going a little red behind the ears. "In case you want to join us all."

"Uh, yeah we do." Stiles rubs his hands together. "Give us a few minutes to drop off our stuff and we're there.”

“We probably won’t have time,” Peter says, checking his watch. “Rehearsal dinner’s in a few hours.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Stiles tells Scott. “We’re going. I just spent twelve hours in a plane listening to a symphony of crying babies and I _want my fucking beach time_.” He shoots Peter a look that says he better not argue. “How about everybody else? Are we the last to arrive?”

“Mine and Isaac’s flight got in this morning. Oh, and Derek and Kira’s been here for a bit too.”

“It’s like a family reunion,” Stiles says, feeling giddy. Hell, he sees most of these people on a daily basis and is still psyched to see them here too, that every single one of them made it out of Beacon Hills to join in on the wedding.

“Got the key cards,” Peter says, turning around from the front desk and handing Stiles a plastic card, pocketing the other in his pants. “Shall we?”

“We shall,” Stiles says. He gives Scott a salute and heads over to the elevators with Peter, suddenly forgetting all about the flight and his exhaustion and the fact that the last thing he ate was what seemed to be baby food applesauce, instead focusing all his attention on being here, being on solid ground, and being more than ready to have a good time.

\--

Their room, despite being a whopping sixteen floors up from the ground floor, is charming. The carpet is soft under Stiles’ worn feet when he shakes off his shoes and the bed is humongous and oh-so-inviting, practically beckoning Stiles and his sore muscles toward its freshly laundered sheets. He very nearly belly flops onto the bedding until he catches a glimpse out the window.

"Holy shit," Stiles exclaims as he approaches it and pulls the curtains back. "The beach is right there! We have to go."

"If we do, we won't have time to shower before dinner."

"Fuck that!" Stiles says, already unzipping his suitcase to find his swimming trunks. "Scott said everybody was there. I want to be where everybody is. And it's _right there_."

Stiles points out the window, hoping the sight of rippling waves and bright blue skies and yachts rolling by in the distant water allures him to the idea. Peter looks at Stiles shucking off his clothes like he's currently getting undressed for all the wrong reasons.

"What happened to the kid who was so greedy for sex he wanted to do it in an airplane lavatory?"

"The kid who wants to run into the ocean pushed him out of the way," Stiles reasons. "And besides—"

He lifts his eyebrows at Peter in a suggestive dance that Peter clearly understands but is not interested in entertaining.

"No. I'm not fucking you on the beach."

"What?!" Stiles says, affronted, mostly because he remembers a Peter from the beginning of their relationship who would fuck Stiles in a changing booth or a quiet laundromat or the very back of a movie theater just to relish in the joy of having sex with him. Either the magic is gone, or Peter is extremely strict about introducing sand to his intimate areas. "It's so good _drinks_ are named after it. And it's _sexy_."

"It's not sexy," Peter says firmly, unwavering in his opinion.

Stiles groans. Everybody around him used to be more adventurous, he clearly needs to replace them all with more ambitious, creative, sexually courageous souls. He's just about to shimmy out of his pants when Peter grabs hold of a belt loop and yanks Stiles closer to him, pulling him straight to his chest.

"How about," he murmurs, one hand slipping from the belt loop to the curve of his ass, "me fucking you on crisp, recently ironed hotel sheets? Tell me that isn't sexy."

"It's boring," Stiles says, planting his hands on Peter's chest to keep them at a distance where Peter's lips and stubble and occasionally appearing tongue don't distract him. "Is this the couple we are now? The kind that only fucks in beds?"

"We fuck all kinds of places," Peter says, apparently refusing to be challenged into acquiescing. "But not where we're going to risk crabs crawling up our assholes."

It paints a picture vivid enough that Stiles' beach fantasy withers to an unsalvageable death, which leaves him with nothing but to resign himself to having boring, easy, vanilla as fuck sex on the bed. 

"Fine," Stiles grumbles, reaching down to grab Peter's swim trunks and throw them at his chest. "But we're still going to the beach."

"We really don't have the time."

"Oh, _live a little_ ," Stiles says. "We have hours until the rehearsal dinner. I'll throw in three showers just for the hell of it and have time for them all, you'll see."

“Fine,” Peter says, sighing. “You’re wrong, but fine.”

\--

Seeing everybody on the beach for the first time feels a little bit like coming back to school after a very long summer break. Everybody's a little taller than he remembers, a little tanner, a little more attractive, and Stiles is almost overwhelmed to see them all again.

He hasn't seen Cora and Lydia since they announced their engagement to him over a Skype call, and before that was when everybody threw Lydia a going-away party when she decided to move to South America to be closer to Cora. It's been strange, not having her around all the time to jump in to save them all from their own stupidity, not seeing her roll her eyes at him while simultaneously applying lipstick, not having her in his life. Same with a bunch of other people here—so many people branched out from Beacon Hills after school, not that Stiles can blame any of them, but seriously. Seeing them all in one place again makes him want to run into the ocean and shave his head and then go on a dangerous adventure.

A bunch of them are playing a heated game of chicken in the water by the time Stiles makes it close enough on the beach to recognize them, but Lydia is stretched out on the sand, striped beach towel beneath her and matching umbrella dug into the ground next to her. She looks like a supermodel sunbathing on the beach, dark sunglasses on her nose and red hair tousled by her shoulder.

"Hey, I'll meet you in the water in a minute," Stiles says to Peter. "I'm just gonna go say hi first."

“Sit in the shade,” Peter warns him. “Or you’ll burn to a crisp.”

Stiles pushes him toward to water by the shoulder, walking over to Lydia’s umbrella. He thought it might be weird, being here at Lydia's wedding after spending so many years crushing on her, waiting for her to realize they were meant to be, expecting it to eventually happen, but here and now, seeing her in person again after so long, Stiles realizes how silly that worry was. It's been a while since he thought about Lydia that way, and a while since he realized that all his elementary school hopes and dreams of being with her weren't going to happen, and considering that they're both now with people who make them much, much happier romantically than either of them could've made the other, Stiles is really just happy to be here.

Even if he should've been a bridesmaid, seriously. That part he's still a little salty about.

"Hey, stranger," Stiles says, walking over to Lydia. "Go on, tell me I'm a sight for sore eyes."

He stretches his arms out, grinning, and Lydia's head snaps in his direction. A flicker of a smile passes over her, then she fights it down and coolly readjusts her sunglasses.

"You're awfully late, Stiles."

"Hey, I made it in time for the big day."

"At least," Lydia says, sighing, before patting the hot sand next to her in invitation. "How was your flight?"

"Exhaustive and uncomfortable," Stiles says, stretching out on the spot of beach she’s motioning to. The warm sand heats up his skin like a blanket, soothing his cramped muscles. "Good movie choices though. Did you know that orcas have to hold their breath when they go underwater?"

"For about fifteen minutes," Lydia replies without missing a beat.

"Should've known you'd know that," Stiles says. "You excited about the wedding?"

"Of course I am," she says. "It's going to be spectacular. We’ve been planning it for months and it’s going to be nothing short of perfect.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Stiles squints out against the bright sun, into the horizon where the waves lick up the skyline with every roll of the tide. He sees Peter splashing into the water, burgundy swim-trunks wet around his thighs—Stiles is actually starting to regret sneaking Peter’s speedo out of his suitcase if only because of the saucy view he would be privy to right now if he hadn’t—and feels content.

“I think everything happened the way it was supposed to,” Stiles says. “You and Cora—it just looks right when you two are together. She’s great.”

He can’t help but think about how _different_ everything would be now if Stiles had never given up pursuing Lydia, if he had hung onto every smidgen of hope that they could have a relationship, if he had never let himself look elsewhere. He knows now, in hindsight, that they never would’ve worked as something other than friends, which is really for the better, considering where fate ended up steering them.

“I know,” Lydia says. She looks over at Stiles and seems to read his thoughts. “You know that you and I wouldn't have worked out, yes?”

“Hell _yes_ ,” Stiles agrees, laughing. “I’m happy as _fuck_.”

“It shows,” Lydia comments. She follows his gaze out to the sea where Peter is swimming out to the rest of them. Stiles can’t tell what her expression is behind her sunglasses.

"Are you okay with him being here?" he asks.

Lydia tuts. "You mean the same way I was okay with him showing up to all the other parties you brought him to?"

"I'm just asking," Stiles says.

"He's changed," Lydia says. "Everybody can see it. Everybody talks about it when you're not around."

"What?"

"You've made him less terrible," Lydia says, which sounds about as close to a compliment he's getting. "Which is why I'm fine with him being here. And Cora is too."

"I—don't know what to say," Stiles says, and he really doesn't. Then again. "You think this is a superpower I have? Turning the evil good because they're so charmed by me?"

"No," Lydia says.

"Who should I take on next?"

"No," Lydia says again. "And you do realize that Peter can probably hear everything you're saying?"

Stiles shrugs, readjusting his swim trunks. He gives Lydia a private smirk. "Eh. I kind of like it when he gets jealous."

"Nobody else does." Lydia gives him a firm look. "So maybe you should smooth his feathers before he murders half the beach?" She purses her lips, readjusting her sunglasses. "This is supposed to be a special weekend for me, and murder victims would really sour it."

"He's moved on from murdering his way out of his problems," Stiles says, and it's sentences like this that really smack it in his face how weird his life is. "If I flirt with some surfer boy today, he'd probably just throw a jelly fish at him."

Lydia sighs. "It's an improvement, I suppose."

"Trust me. It is."

"I believe you," she says. "You're going to burn, by the way."

"What?"

She digs around in her beach tote until she comes back with a bottle of sunscreen, slapping it in his hand. "You're going to burn. Your skin is going to bake like a chicken under this sun if you don't protect yourself."

He sighs for show, but there's something unexplainably nice about being back here with his friends, with people who worry about him and remind him to put on sunscreen. It feels like a big, warm hug, a hug that's magnified when Cora splashes her way out of the water, squeezing out her stringy wet hair, and kneels next to Stiles to smear a forgotten bit of sunscreen away from his neck as he rubs it into his chest.

"You missed some," she says. "Now when you're done with this, can you go out there and tell your no-good boyfriend to play by the rules?"

"Nice to see you too," Stiles says. "Bring it in, would you?"

He holds out his arms and Cora wraps her wet arms around him, her hair getting salt water in his eyes as they hug. She's gotten quite the tan since Stiles saw her last, like she's spent a great deal of time working out in the sun and surfing at midday.

"How is it that you've somehow gotten even _stronger_ than the last time I saw you?" Stiles asks, because he could've sworn he felt Cora lift him off the sand during that embrace. "What the hell's in the food down here?"

"Nothing that'll help you out," Cora says, pinching the lack of muscle in Stiles' arm. Okay, so he might want to start working out more. Eventually. Not now, though, he's on _vacation_. "Come on, you guys. We're starting Marco Polo."

"I thought you guys were playing chicken."

"We were, up until Peter decided to start cheating," Cora says darkly, then looks at Stiles like he's personally responsible for Peter's hoodwinking and ought to start training that out of him.

"How do you even _cheat_ at—you know what, I don't even want to know," Stiles says. "I'm up for Marco Polo.” He gets to his feet, brushing the sand off his legs. “You coming, Lydia?”

“Sure,” she says. “As long as the rest of you are ready to lose.”

“Just so we’re clear,” Stiles says, “this better be a fair game. I don’t want any werewolf advantage ruining it for the rest of us.”

“Of course it will be,” Cora says, patting him on the shoulder, which Stiles knows means the exact opposite.

\--

Not that Stiles will ever admit it out loud, but Peter was right when he said that there just weren't enough hours in their day to accommodate both beach fun and an after beach fun shower.

Which would be fine, if sand wasn't currently creeping up his behind, nestling into his privates, and grinding into his feet. How it got into his socks, Stiles isn't sure, but all he's getting from this is that he should write the government about using sand as modern day torture. Just sprinkle a few pieces into someone's socks every day and bam. Their world is never peaceful again. It feels especially like torture here at Cora and Lydia’s rehearsal dinner, mostly because people in prim and posh suits aren’t expected to go fixing wedgies and repeatedly taking their shoes off to smack the sand out of them. He’s supposed to stand around like a proper adult and pretend he had the common sense to prioritize hygiene over playing a hideously rigged game of Marco Polo in the ocean.

He discreetly tries to poke sand out of his underwear, stopping only to seize a flute of champagne on the tray sweeping by on a waiter's hand. He grabs it with little spillage, then promptly turns around, smacks into Isaac's chest, and very nearly upturns the whole thing on him. He rights the glass a nanosecond before a tie-related emergency occurs. Wait a second, Isaac in a tie?

"Wow," Stiles chuckles, grabbing it and flipping it over. "Ralph Lauren, huh? I don't think I've ever seen you in anything quite like this before."

"Stop flirting with me, Stiles," Isaac says, yanking his tie back.

"I just meant. Nice to know you own more than just sweatshirts and ratty old scarves." He curves his mouth into a suggestive smirk. "If you want flirting, I'll show you flirting."

A few years ago, a line like that would've disturbed Isaac enough to put a stone-cold stop to their bantering battle; nowadays, Isaac is too familiar with his tactics. He just smooths his tie down and shakes his head.

"Thanks, I'll pass. I see enough of your flirting skills watching you with Peter."

Stiles tilts his head to the side, chuffed. "Aww. You watch us flirt? How adorable and not at all weird."

"You're watching him now, aren't you?"

"I'm his boyfriend. There's a lot of stuff that I do that I wouldn't want you to."

"Never tell me what any of the stuff is," Isaac says.

"I think I just might," Stiles says. "The next time you annoy me sounds good."

He swallows back a swig of champagne, glad that a little flight isn't keeping him from smashing down Isaac's one-liners, and scans the room. Peter's across it, currently having a chat with Derek that looks a little less friendly than most if the stern lines on Derek's face that make him look like an annoyed father are anything to go by. He wonders if he should head over there and butt in, and then realizes that watching for a bit might be more entertaining.

"You know," Stiles says, watching Derek's mouth move and Peter's body language stiffen, vaguely wondering if popcorn would be appropriate right now on his end. "I just realized me and Peter are at a wedding together. I never thought that would happen."

Isaac chuckles. "There's a lot that happened between you two that you never thought would happen, isn't there?"

Well, that's an understatement. Stiles still has trouble these days connecting the dots between those first few encounters to where they are now, how they went from enemies to allies to fuck buddies to—more. So much more that Stiles gets overwhelmed by it sometimes, by the realness of what they have, by the fact that it even exists. And now here they're at a wedding, Peter wearing the socks Stiles got him for his birthday and Stiles' eyes always gravitating back to Peter across the room every few minutes just to see, just to smile. It's weird, he supposes, how easily things can change between two people. Come to think of it, that should probably be the motto for the entire wedding party, if not all the guests.

"What do you think they're talking about?" Stiles asks, pointing his glass at Derek and Peter. "Should we dub them with funny voices?"

"All right," Isaac says. "I'll be Derek." He rolls his shoulders, slants his eyebrows, and deepens his voice to imitate Derek's default grumble. "Hey, Peter. What the fuck are you still doing bringing Stiles into public places with you?"

"Okay, game over," Stiles says. "You're no fun."

"I'm lots of fun," Isaac refutes. "You just don’t appreciate it.”

“Show me someone who does, and I’ll believe you,” Stiles says. He takes another slow sip. “I think I’m going to sneak a bit closer. Listen in.”

He slips through the crowd, sliding between conversations and old friends Stiles hasn’t seen in years, and just as he's about to slink further over to Derek and Peter and eavesdrop on their heated little tête-à-tête, a rather orange-faced man swoops in and stops Stiles.

"I don't think we've officially met," he says, sticking out an equally orange hand. "I'm Ronald, family of the bride. The brunette bride, that is."

"Stiles," he says, shaking Ronald's hand. "Funny, don't think I've ever heard Cora mention you."

"Oh, I'm very busy. Hard to make time these days. I'm in the toilet paper business, and let me tell you, never a dry day."

"Was that a pun, Ronald?"

Ronald laughs, one of those loud, obnoxious guffaws that shakes the whole room.

"I guess it was." And a distasteful, cringeworthy one at that, but Stiles can't imagine any word play concerning toilet paper to ever be anything else. "It's a very special business, I'll tell you that much. Working in the customer service department, now that's the real poop."

Again, Stiles could do without the constant references to bowel movements. His lip curls upward like he's getting a whiff of exceptionally bad cheese without him even realizing. "Customer service for toilet paper?"

"You'd be surprised! The amount of complaints dumped on those poor people every day—let's just say manufacturing is the nicer side of the duties."

Out of the corner of his eye, Stiles sees Derek walk away from Peter, which as far as Stiles is concerned, is his cue to skedaddle out of this conversation and fill the space at Peter's side just conveniently vacated.

"I have to go," Stiles says, already edging away. "Thanks for the chat."

"Wait, I have a business card you should take," Ronald insists, reaching into his pocket.

"I'll be back. Hold that thought."

He leaves before Ronald can start digging deeper into the nasty truth of the toilet paper corporations and start veering off into tangents of adult diapers or genital wipes or other cousins of toilet paper, seizing his flute of champagne and beelining for the other end of the room. He skirts his way quickly through the crowd as if being chased, stopping only when he's reached Peter and is safely shadowed by him.

"Hi," Peter says, turning to him.

"I thought you said you didn't have any wacky relatives," Stiles hisses.

"I don't."

"Then why did I just spend twenty minutes getting to listen to Ronald over there talk my ear off about the toilet paper business?"

"Oh, Ronald. He's twice removed, married in, hardly ever talk to him. He's not exactly what I'd refer to as family."

"He's the worst," Stiles says. "What did you and Derek talk about?"

"That," Peter says. He's smiling now, the type of smile that he's clearly trying to bite back but isn't managing to do. He tips his glass of champagne gently left and right. "Just checking up on me and you. Making sure I didn't kidnap, hogtie, and drag you here against your will."

"Derek's concerned about me? Seriously?" Stiles is amazed. "Huh. He could _show_ it a little more, don't you think?"

"He shows it by threatening me, which I think is enough."

Stiles grins, leaning in. "What did he say? I want to hear every juicy word."

"I don't want to give you the satisfaction."

"That nice, huh?"

"I refuse to answer," he says, which Stiles is taking to mean yes, indeed that nice.

"What about Lydia, did you talk to her yet?"

"I did," Peter says. "I daresay her and Derek are working off of the same book."

"What does that mean?"

"It means," Peter huffs, "that if one more person threatens to behead me if I kill, abandon, or so much as leave a single blemish on your life, I'm going to start suspecting there's a script going around."

Stiles straightens his bow tie, a smile tickling him at how much everybody is ready to terrorize Peter on his behalf. It's sweet.

"That, or there's a ruse going around I am the butt of," Peter continues, sounding rather bitter. "I hate being the butt of things."

"Your butt is—is." Stiles falters. "I don't know. I wanted to make a sexy comment about your butt but I couldn't follow through in time."

"I'm disappointed."

"It's the jet lag," Stiles says hopelessly. "It's thrown me off my wit." He downs the rest of his champagne, realizing he's on his last swallow after the last drop slides into his tongue. "Hang tight, sexy. I'm grabbing another libation."

He winks at Peter and slides back into the crowd to find the tall waiter with the duck-tailed blazer and the tray of champagne, at which point he immediately runs into Derek. This time, at least, he's not armed with a glass full of alcohol, and all he gets is a slight throb to the head after smacking his forehead on Derek's brick wall of a chest.

"Hey," Stiles says, rubbing his head. "I’ve been looking for you. Heard you've been threatening Peter. He thinks you've all been taking turns." He looks around the room, grinning. "Who's next?"

Derek must not be catching up on his amusement, because he sighs, puts his martini down, and frowns. "I'm not apologizing to him."

"Apologize?" Stiles repeats. "Holy shit, no, you're not. That'd be a crime." He leans in conspiratorially. "Just tell me what you said."

Derek surveys Stiles for one long, hard moment. Finally, he seems to decide he's worthy of the information and says, "To treat you well."

"You all think he's just been buttering me up for an unexpected murder?"

"Normally, I wouldn't put it past him," Derek says. "But I don't think he is."

"Because I'm so charming?"

"He certainly seems to think so."

"Hey, Cora!" Stiles calls out, snagging her by the back of her shirt when she slips by. "Have you threatened Peter yet?"

She looks at Stiles with equal parts suspicion and exasperation at that. "What did he do?"

"Nothing. Well, not in the last twenty-four hours," Stiles says. Anytime before that, he can't speak for. "Just as a reminder to treat me like the rare jewel I am, or else." He straightens up, preening. "You know."

"Are you paying people to do this?"

"What? No. According to popular opinion, it's a very personally satisfying experience to threaten him."

"As much as I can believe that," Cora admits, "I promised Lydia no drama tonight."

"Hey, she got in on the action too."

"She did?"

"Yeah. It's not really drama. It's more like that game at the carnival where you throw a pie at someone's face and they can't do anything but stand there and take it." The image is more than amusing, and has Stiles wondering if this is something he might be able to persuade Peter to participate in sometime in the future. That, or at least the game where a good aim lets you dunk someone in a tank of cold water.

"You seem to be enjoying this an awful lot," Cora points out. "You two are still good, aren't you?"

She looks genuinely worried for a second, and the sight is more touching than Stiles would've expected. He hadn't even realized that people were pulling for them. Somehow, he always had the nagging suspicion that the second he and Peter turned their backs, people were taking the opportunity to place bets on how soon they'd break up and how messy it would end up being. Maybe people are less immature than he’s making them out to be, or maybe just more mature than he’s expecting.

"Yeah. Very good," Stiles says. "Actually, I told him I'd punch out anybody being mean to him."

"Then you're not doing a very good job of it," Derek says.

"Hey, this is all just good-hearted ribbing," Stiles defends. "It's not like you're over here plotting ways to get housekeeping to lose his laundry." He scratches the back of his head. "Or, you know. Serious stuff like rehashing his old murder sprees."

"It's my rehearsal dinner," Cora reminds him. "You really think I'm thinking about Peter that much?"

"No, you're probably not. Let me try and guess what you _are_ thinking about." Stiles squints, trying to focus in on Cora's thought process. "Sexy honeymoon with your new bride?"

"Sounds about right," Cora says. "So let me bask in it."

"No problem,” Stiles says, and just as he’s about to go find more people to remind to go intimidate Peter into treating Stiles correctly, a hand slides onto his shoulder and squeezes.

“You wouldn’t be leaving me out of the conversation, would you?” Peter says into Stiles’ ear, draping his arm around Stiles’ waist. “What are you talking about over here?”

“How much we love you, of course,” Stiles says, throwing his arm around Peter’s waist as well. He gives him a big, toothy, convincing grin. “What else, honeybear?”

\--

Everybody gets whisked away to their tables after a few more rounds of champagne filter through the crowd. Stiles is happy to see that he's made it to the Important People crowd and hasn't been assigned to sit with the parents or the children, both of which somehow would've made him feel very young and in need of babysitting, and instead he’s squarely between Peter and Scott and in close proximity to the hosts of honor.

They're all seated and enjoying their freshly topped-off glasses when the toasts begin, reminding Stiles that he's actually supposed to cobble together a few nice things and helpful adages to share with the group, and not for the first time, he wishes more than anything that he had had the sense to slip that little notecard on the fridge into his luggage when he was packing. He listens to Lydia's mother speak a table away about love and joy and togetherness while she raises her glass, and he starts to get a little sweaty realizing he's next.

"Breathe now and again," Peter murmurs by his ear.

"What?"

His hand slips over Stiles' wrist, nudging his pulse point and alerting Stiles of his racing heartbeat, that familiar fear of messing up bubbling up in the thumps of Stiles' chest. And if talking in front of a bunch of hardly listening classmates was bad back in high school, then how much worse is speaking to an entire room of dignified, highbrow adults in formalwear? 

It only takes two seconds of standing up and clearing his throat for Stiles to remember how much he hates like public speaking, and promptly forgets everything he had originally planned to say, _and_ what he had put together mentally in the plane when he realized he had left his first draft behind. Literally all the words seem to be out of his brain, up until Peter touches the small of his back and manages to, inexplicably, calm him down.

"I've known these ladies for a long time," Stiles starts, completely freewheeling. "And let me tell you, they weren't always this cozy." A smattering of laughter works its way through the crowd. "Me and my friends here all remember a version of these two where they weren’t even on the same sides. Nobody could've ever guessed they'd end up getting along, much less getting married, but that's something I've really stopped being surprised by. How quickly we can see someone differently."

He looks down at Peter, who's looking back at him like he's giving his full attention, like he's hanging onto Stiles' every word, a private smile on his lips.

"The point is, you never know who might end up being important to you one day if you just... let your past go," Stiles continues. "Because, at the risk of sounding cheesy, the best thing we can hold onto in life is each other. So, uh. May you guys always be as in love as you are right now."

He lifts his glass, perhaps a little too enthusiastically and nearly spilling half of it on Scott's head in the process, and feels the redness burn up his neck as the crowd claps at his speech like they're all genuinely impressed. He completely forgot half of his jokes and didn’t even remember to talk about that one time Cora and Lydia ended up in a Baskin Robin’s during Valentine’s Day thanks to one of Stiles’ suggestions gone wrong, but he did manage to get the message about love conquering all out there, so there’s that.

"Hey, good job," Scott whispers as Stiles sits back down.

"Did anybody cry?"

"Ronald over there did, but I think he's just having an allergic reaction to the peanut oil."

"Aw, man." Stiles turns to Peter, frowning. "See, what did I say? This jet lag is dragging me down."

"You're not that bad," Peter says. His hand finds Stiles' knee under the table, squeezing. In an undertone, he adds, "I'll see if I can work some of that jet lag out of you later."

"Promise?"

Peter trails his hand up Stiles' knee to his thigh, and around the other side of the table, a set of utensils clatters down and Stiles catches Derek's deadly unamused eyes. Stiles really has to be careful with what sexy things they whisper to each other in a room full of werewolves with ears like bats. Hell, half of the people in the room probably just heard that.

"Okay, throw a lid on it for now, big guy," Stiles warns, throwing back the last his champagne. "Pretty sure we're advertising our sex life to nearly everybody in here."

"Fine by me," Peter murmurs. He leaves in closer, a grin stretching his face. "I thought it would be easier than throwing jellyfish at people to warn them off of you."

"You bastard," Stiles says. "I knew you were listening."

"Couldn't help it."

"Of course you couldn't," Stiles says, pinching him under the table. "Like what you heard, at least?"

"Everybody seems to be laboring under the delusion that you've completely reformed me," Peter says, sounding baffled. "I never realized that all I had to do to get people to trust me is hang out with you."

"I'm like rehab. Walking and talking rehab for people with criminal pasts."

"Oh really?”

"Yeah. I'm thinking my dick has magical distraction powers." He flourishes his eyebrows. "Wouldn't you agree?"

"I thought you wanted to save the dirty talk for later this evening."

Stiles looks across the table and catches another dark look from Derek, although he has to say, that grim glare loses a bit of its impact the more he sees it. That, or all the champagne is making him brazen. He better stop drinking before he starts considering blowing Peter under the tablecloth, but thankfully, that's when the waiters come out with trays of food, officially distracting Stiles' attention away from the drinks.

"Later, _yes_ ," Stiles promises. "I'm sticking a bookmark in this conversation."

“Consider me on the edge of my seat.”

Stiles smiles, squeezes his knee, and gives Peter what he hopes looks like tempting bedroom eyes. He really should practice those in the mirror.

\--

It's past midnight when they make it back up to the hotel room, Stiles nearly exhausted enough to beg Peter to piggyback him upstairs. He feels like he still has about three layers of airplane on his skin, mixed with the stress of mingling with strangers, and the sluggishness that inevitably comes a few hours after drinking too many complimentary alcoholic drinks. Stiles leans his cheek against Peter's backside while Peter slides the keycard through the door's reader, waiting to be reunited with the luxury of a mattress and bedsheets.

"God, I'm tired," Stiles moans as he walks zombie-like into the dark room, toeing his shoes off before collapsing onto the bed. There's something digging into his backside as he does, and when he fishes it out, he realizes it's a chocolate mint. "Damn, this is a nice hotel."

He eats it while Peter vanishes into the bathroom and presumably combs the pounds of product out of his hair, letting his eyes drift. He has the nagging feeling that this won't be the only wedding he'll be attending this year what with everybody he knows reaching a point where they're a) financially responsible, b) old enough to not mortify their parents with news of an engagement, and c) in happy relationships. It makes him feel oddly adult.

"Who do you think is going to get married next?" Stiles asks, trying to wrangle his jacket off himself without sitting up, a task not as easy as it first seems.

"Your father," Peter replies, voice muffled where it's wafting out from the bathroom. "I found the ring box in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom the last time we visited him."

"Seriously? Holy shit." Stiles finally gets the blazer off and flings it across the room. "Why were you snooping in his medicine cabinet? Do you snoop in everybody's medicine cabinet?"

"It humors me."

Stiles chuckles, folding his arms behind his head on the neatly fluffed pillow and taking in a deep, refreshing breath. If he closes his eyes, he can still feel the sway of the plane, smell the upholstery of the seat, and all he wants to do is sleep all that off as soon as possible. He lets his mind wander to the idea of his father's wedding, what sort of suit he'd wear, what dance lessons he'd take beforehand. Peter's obnoxiously good at dancing; maybe he can be his father's instructor.

Over in the bathroom, the sink turns on and Stiles hears the unmistakable sound of toothbrush bristles in action. He should probably do that too and tend to his hygiene before he passes out on the bed, but right now it's just nice to relax. Breathe. Listen to the soothing sounds of Peter's nightly routine just a few feet away.

"Your speech tonight," Peter brings up, words almost swallowed by the running of the faucet. There's a tapping sound, like he's just finished brushing his teeth and is knocking the water off his toothbrush on the rim of the sink.

"Oh, I know," Stiles groans, struggling to undo his bow tie. He tugs and tugs without success. "It was cliché as fuck. Go ahead and make fun."

The bathroom light spilling out onto the wall shuts off, the beige wallpaper shrouded in darkness as Peter walks out of the bathroom, his shirt unbuttoned down to his navel and his shoes already slipped off. As much as Stiles likes the sleek and prim and double-oh-seven air that came with Peter's completed ensemble from before dinner began, he has to admit, this disheveled, half undone, behind-the-scenes look is infinitely better, if only because it's a sacred sight only Stiles ever gets to see.

"Actually," Peter admits, pulling his shirts out of his pants and undoing the rest of the buttons, "I very much enjoyed it."

"You did?"

He smirks. "Because it was about me."

"What?"

"Please," Peter scoffs, shrugging his shirt off and crawling onto the bed, sliding a hand up Stiles' leg as he goes. "All that talk of giving yourself the chance to see people differently." He dips down, untucking Stiles' shirt and sucking a kiss onto his stomach. "It was about me and you."

"You're just full of it," Stiles says, then lets out an involuntary gasp as Peter licks over his abdomen. "Not everything is about—oh—you."

"I don't believe you."

Then Peter's tugging Stiles' ridiculously expensive rental tux down his legs and kissing his way from his thighs to his knees to his calf until Stiles is shaking and half-hard in his boxers. It's always two modes with them, and no in between: either hot and rough and passionately aggressive sex, or tortuously slow and languid sex that Peter draws out on purpose just to see Stiles writhe and beg, and from the way he's slowly sucking spots into the underside of Stiles' knee, he thinks the second currently applies.

Peter tugs Stiles' socks off and yanks on his pants until they're a crumpled pile on the carpet, then gets back to work licking his way around Stiles' kneecaps, up his thighs, near his hamstrings. He nudges Stiles' legs up until Stiles folds them open against his chest, whining.

"Fuck, you need to shave," Stiles groans, even as he slings a leg over Peter's shoulder. "I'm getting rug burn on my thighs."

Peter smirks, then rubs his jaw against Stiles' leg just to be cheeky, scratchy stubble running over his skin. It sets his nerve endings on fire, cock hardening.

"I think you like it," Peter whispers, grinning. His eyes are getting dark where they're watching Stiles from between his legs, hooded with arousal.

Before Stiles can sass him back, Peter dips in and licks flat over Stiles' hole, outlining the puckered muscle slowly. Stiles gasps, heat coiling in his chest, and reaches to grab the sheets just as Peter slides his tongue into him. Well, he's not so tired anymore, that much is undeniable.

"Oh," Stiles is moaning, easing his legs further apart to give Peter extra room. " _Ah_ , Peter."

"You're not going to come like this," Peter promises, rubbing circles with his thumb over Stiles' thighs, tongue flattening, lapping over Stiles' entrance before curving and curling inside, reducing Stiles to bitten off gasps of pleasure. "You're going to come with me inside you, fucking you like you want it."

Stiles nods without argument, too caught up in the sensations and the words and the images Peter's painting in his mind.

"I wanna ride you," Stiles says.

"That can be arranged," Peter says, then goes back to licking circles around Stiles' rim. 

His hands knead Stiles' ass and rub his thighs and massage his hips while his tongue does obscene things to Stiles' hole, his mouth like a drug Stiles wants endlessly more of, so good, so good, and he ruts down against the mattress and into his every lick. His breathing is just starting to pick up with the promise of his building climax, his orgasm just around the corner, _right there_ , all just from being licked and sucked and teased after a long tightly-wound day of airplanes and fancy blazers, which is of course right when Peter pulls away.

Stiles whines.

"I said I wasn't going to let you come like this," Peter reminds him, something in his voice firm and reprimanding and so unbelievably arousing, and just as quickly as his tongue leaves, Peter's sliding two of his fingers into Stiles and stretching him open.

It feels good, everything slick and fast thanks to Peter's tongue work, but Stiles wants it even smoother, wants Peter's fingers working in and out of him easily. Peter's other hand is still squeezing Stiles' hipbone, a warm weight keeping him in place, and Stiles covers his fingers there with his own to get his attention.

"Lube," is the first thought his brain can successfully build and publish aloud. He collects a few more words. "Where'd you pack the lube? Tell me you did."

Peter tsks. "Of course I did."

Stiles breathes a sigh of relief, because he actually forgot. Somewhere in between all the speech writing and tie picking and medication sorting, he forgot to pack the utmost essentials: the sexual equipment. And as much as his brain is focused on sex right now, he has a feeling it wouldn't be if he had to troll convenience stores for the next hour looking for supplies.

"Thank god you're always so prepared," Stiles breathes out as the bed lurches with Peter getting off of it and reaching for the duffel bag. "Were you a Boy Scout?"

"I wouldn't have been caught dead as a Boy Scout."

Stiles isn't surprised, even if it would've been nice to see pictures of little Peter untying sailor's notes and climbing trees and pitching tents. "Ah. Too moral for you?"

Peter crawls his way back up the bed until he's level with Stiles' eyes, the heat of his body over Stiles' slightly hypnotizing, and suddenly three lubed fingers are pushing at Stiles' entrance. "The vests, actually," he says, sliding them in. "They're hideous."

Stiles doesn't want to talk about Boy Scout apparel anymore after that, his hands gripping Peter's shoulders while he works his fingers in and out of his slick hole. Stiles doesn't know how this is happening, but even after having sex a countless number of times in so many varying ways in a lot of different places, all of this still feels mind-numbingly _good_ , and Stiles can't imagine himself ever getting sick of this. Peter just knows exactly what to do with his body—how to crook his fingers, how to grind his hips, how to bite down on the tendons in Stiles' neck and make him moan. He tilts his head up, finding Peter's mouth, and slots their lips together, intent on getting Peter as close to him as possible.

"Always so easy to open you up for me," Peter murmurs, drawing his lower lip into his mouth and biting. "See, isn't this nicer than me fucking you in an airplane lavatory?"

"I'm still upset about that," Stiles admits.

Peter nudges his fingers deeper inside Stiles, dragging their parted mouths together, and Stiles can't remember ever being upset about anything at all anymore. Peter's lips curve into a smile against his. 

"Still?"

" _Yes_ ," Stiles manages to gasp out, hips circling onto Peter's fingers, arching into the thrust of them. "You know it'd be hot. You—you and me having sex where we shouldn't be five thousand feet above the ground."

"I think," Peter murmurs, tangling his free hand into Stiles' hair, "this is much hotter." He slides his tongue over to Stiles' ear, tracing the lobe until Stiles is shaking. "You writhing underneath me on soft sheets, spread out and gorgeous, all for my taking."

Okay, fine, maybe that is pretty hot. Peter's fingers scissor apart and curl upwards and very quickly, Stiles is already teetering dangerously close to climax. He takes in a rattling breath, squeezing Peter's shoulders.

"Roll over," Stiles demands.

Peter doesn't protest, clearly aware of the urgency in Stiles' voice. He slips his fingers out of Stiles, taking only a second to rub over the rim of his entrance before grabbing Stiles by the hips and flipping them around. He looks great underneath Stiles, dark hooded eyes and flushed chest and hair in disarray, and Stiles just wants to ravish him all night—so he gets started on that pronto. His hands fumble their way over the mattress to the lube, slicking Peter's cock up. His dick is practically mouth-watering right now, all hard and pink and begging to be sucked on, but Stiles has other priorities tonight and refuses to get distracted.

"Just admit it," Stiles says, dragging his hands up Peter's length and relishing in the way Peter bites his lip and pushes his hips upward. "This would've been pretty nice in the airplane lavatory."

"Much nicer now," Peter says, reaching forward to brush his fingers, his skin warm, over Stiles' jaw. "All the room in the world to watch you ride my cock."

Stiles gives him a cheeky grin. "Oh, is that what I'm doing?"

"It is," Peter confirms, licking his lips. "Unless you'd rather hold onto the headboard and have me fuck your from behind."

Stiles feels another thrill of arousal run through him, his cock aching. "Tomorrow," he promises, lining himself up over Peter. "For now, I'm in charge."

He eases down until just the head of Peter's cock is breaching him before pulling back up, delighting in the tease, the way Peter's hands fly to Stiles' hips and _hold on_. For a good few weeks into their relationship, back when it was just glorious nudity and sex and nothing more, Stiles felt comfortable giving Peter the reins and sitting back, learning, experiencing, feeling his way through their new dynamic, but by now, Stiles loves the thrill of being on top, of taking control. He gets to set a pace and watch as Peter crumbles underneath him, moaning and praising and worshiping Stiles' body, his usually so well-composed self unraveling under Stiles' movements.

"Stiles," he says, sounding breathless and windswept and dazed, "if you don't—"

"I _will_ ," Stiles reassures. "Maybe I just like a slow build-up."

He also likes the element of surprise. He rolls down on Peter, taking him all in and arching his back and curving just right, and he does it again, and again, until he realizes that that knocking sound isn't the pulsing of his own heartbeat in his ears but the headboard rocking against the wall.

He starts laughing, unable to curb it in. He can't believe he gets to be _that couple_ that attends weddings together and then has wild fabulous sex until all the hotel furniture shakes. Some poor stranger is next door listening to them, and somehow, that makes it all the funnier.

Peter's hand curls around Stiles' waist, squeezing. "What's so funny?"

"Us. Sex. In a hotel room at a wedding we're attending together."

Peter frowns. "Hardly funny."

"It is. Trust me."

Peter looks at him like if he's finding something to laugh about, not to mention _talk_ about, he isn't being fucked hard enough, and rams his hips up as Stiles pushes down, upping the ante further by slipping his hand over Stiles' cock and stroking it. It definitely manages to steal coherent words straight out of his head, leaving him seeing stars for a good ten seconds before Peter brings him back to earth with a cool hand running up his chest and stopping to rub over his left nipple. Stiles loves how Peter can never just sit back and enjoy, he always has to participate, _always_ , like sex is a game that nobody’s playing right if one person is winning all the hands. He drags his free hand up to Stiles’ collarbones while the other pumps Stiles’ cock, pulling and twisting and rubbing and _god_ , is there anybody in this world who knows how to drive Stiles absolutely wild like Peter does?

“You should see the view I have,” Peter murmurs, softly groaning when Stiles rolls his back forward just as he slides down on Peter’s cock again, stopping to clench around him. Peter’s eyes cloud over at that, which Stiles takes as a massive thumbs up. “ _Stiles_. I feel—”

“Tell me,” Stiles coaxes. “C’mon, you have the filthiest mouth I know.”

“— _lucky_ ,” is what Peter gasps out instead, which is not even close to what Stiles was expecting. It fills Stiles with a heat completely different from the kind sizzling in his midsection, one that makes him want to arch down and stop fucking Peter just to roll around the mattress and kiss for a while, feel like one of those giddy teenagers that is so in love they just want to make out for hours, and if his orgasm wasn’t slowly but surely building, Stiles would consider it.

“See, knew you were a sap,” Stiles says, breathless. “A sap with the filthiest mouth I know, but still.”

“Stiles,” Peter says, gripping his shoulder. “Stop talking.”

Stiles laughs, the sound bubbling out of him. “Got it.”

Stiles has gotten good at this by now; Peter's face, suspended in open-mouthed pleasure, is proof enough. He knows how Peter likes it, how to bounce down, how to clench around his cock, how to swivel his hips and rock up. Peter can say the same—the way he meets Stiles' thrusts downward, strokes his dick, and groans his encouragement as Stiles moves are all moves that are like magic to Stiles, urging him that much closer to orgasm.

Just then, Peter snaps his hips up, meeting Stiles halfway, and Stiles' head tips back, muscles weakened by the intensity of the fierceness Peter's fucking him with. He loves this, being on top and still having Peter inside him, setting the pace but still feeling completely wrecked at Peter's hand, and this, he thinks in a daze, this is what heaven better be, endless hours of riding Peter to completion without ever exhausting.

"I'm gonna come," Stiles says, just as he thinks _heaven, this is heaven, you better make it to heaven so I can keep having this_. There are spots blinking behind his eyes, only getting brighter as Peter squeezes the base of his cock. "Peter—I want you to come in me, I want it so much."

"C'mere," Peter growls, nudging Stiles' waist closer with his free hand, and something about the way he maneuvers Stiles to arch over him changes the angle of how Peter's length slips inside him, and suddenly the tip is jolting his prostate.

"Fuck," Stiles says, breathless, lost, and his thighs are almost shaking too much for him to slam back down on Peter's cock at least once, twice, three more times, that angle _just right_ , before he comes.

It feels like the tide sweeping over him, except without all the salt in the mouth and sand in the shorts Stiles experienced at the beach today. He vaguely registers Peter grabbing his waist and ramming up into him, grunting with every thrust, and then a warmth spills inside him and Stiles feels like this day couldn't have ended any better.

He collapses on top of Peter as a sticky mess after that, and within minutes, all that forgotten exhaustion creeps back into him and drapes itself over him. The shower seems miles away, the light by the bed seems miles away, anything that isn't this bed and Peter's body is just too far away, and with that accepted, Stiles lets out a long, shuddering moan into Peter's shoulder and rolls off of him.

"Fuck, I'm tired," he breathes out.

"It's the sex," Peter answers, and then his hand is sliding up and down Stiles' bare arm, which only lulls him that much closer to nodding off.

"And the flying. Our bodies—" He stops to yawn. "—aren't used to that little oxygen and all that—that jostling around."

"Lift your legs."

"What?"

Peter taps on Stiles' thighs, and seeing no point in expending more energy by asking more questions, Stiles obeys, which results in Peter wrangling the sheets they've thoroughly wrinkled out from underneath his body and slinging it over them. The underside of the linens is cool and refreshing, and Stiles feels like he's been cocooned in a soft, soothing cloud.

"You take good care of me, you know that?" Stiles says as Peter slips back onto the bed with him, thinking of nausea tablets and good sex and being covered with a soft sheet. "Pretty nice for someone so terrible."

Peter chuckles, the sound right by his ear. "I can be nice when the mood strikes."

"Mm," Stiles murmurs, agreeing. "And if you aren't, I have a list of people ready to disembowel you."

"I'm well aware," Peter replies. Considering that a few years ago, he probably would've said something along the lines of _bring it on_ , Stiles thinks this is real personal improvement he's seeing here.

\--

It's humid the morning of the wedding. Peter stays in the bathroom twenty minutes longer than usual tending to his hair while Stiles bangs on the door demanding to be let in. He also needs help with his tie, because for whatever reason, he's a grownup who's never learned how to make himself look presentable, and Peter wasting the morning away running anti-frizz mousse through his hair is just not something they have time for.

When Peter does finally burst through the bathroom door, he looks exactly the same as he did before he vanished inside it an eon ago. He grimly says, "we're late!" which is something Stiles is already painfully aware of.

"If you hadn't spent three hours in the bathroom, we wouldn't be."

Peter ignores him. "What's wrong with your tie? You look like a hooligan."

Stiles fiddles uselessly with the end of it. "I can't do it."

Peter swats his hands away to seize the tie like a leash, yanking Stiles closer and fixing it for him without prompting. His hands work quickly with the fabric, eyes concentrated, and Stiles watches his handiwork, trying to figure out what is going through which loop.

"You know," Stiles says, curling his hand around Peter's wrist. "This could be a sexy moment if we weren't in such a rush."

Peter's eyebrow tilts upward, mouth smirking. "It'll still be sexy later." He slides the finished knot up to Stiles' neck. "Too tight?"

Stiles shakes his head. Just as Peter's about to pull away, Stiles squeezes his wrist, keeping him close.

"Come on," Stiles coaxes. "Just one of those super hot kisses where you pull me in by my tie before we go."

"Oh, all right."

Peter does as instructed, wrapping his fist around Stiles' tie and tugging him sharply closer, his other hand immediately finding Stiles' hip as he kisses him. It's a pretty nice kiss, what with the props and the staged spontaneity, so nice that Stiles nearly starts considering a quick blowjob before leaving, but then the reminder that showing up late to the ceremony with unzipped pants and flushed cheeks would probably end with Lydia sautéing him dead during the reception flashes through his mind.

"We have to go," Stiles mumbles regretfully on Peter's mouth, pushing distance between them. He checks his watch. "Shit, we _really_ have to go."

The flushed cheeks are unavoidable, it seems, as Stiles works up quite the sweat running down the hotel halls trying his best to actually be on time. The entire morning has been a disaster. It started out with Peter kissing down Stiles' neck as a wake-up-call, which evolved into a pleasantly lazy handjob, which was just starting to go somewhere when Stiles looked at the alarm clock and realized they had overslept, _way_ overslept, and didn't have time for slow morning sex. Having to cut off morning sex halfway through is definitely not a rejuvenating way to start the day.

"Lydia is going to kill us," Stiles says, wheezing by the time they reach the elevator. "Slowly, painfully." He presses the call button frantically, praying for the elevator to hurry up, but Peter is already seizing his wrist and pulling him away.

"Stairs are faster," he says. 

"Yes, but I'll also be dead at the end of them," Stiles rasps, wishing he had at least hit the treadmill a few times this summer while Peter relentlessly pulls him toward the stairwell.

Fortunately, if they're late, they aren't the only ones, because the wedding hasn't started yet by the time they make it to the main hall. Peter splits to go find Derek while Stiles looks for Scott to see if he knows why they're running at least fifteen minutes behind schedule considering that all the guests are starting to make their way over to their seats and absolutely nobody else is in position.

Stiles finds Scott checking his watch in the hall outside the reception room, pleasantly suited up in all black with a slick smoothness to his hair that looks suspiciously like he asked to borrow some of Peter's hair gel. He looks a little worried, which isn’t a great sign. Stiles comes up to him, clapping his hands together.

"Where are the lucky brides?" Stiles asks.

"Lydia's getting her hair done, but I don't know where Cora is," Scott says, clearly frazzled. "I can't find her."

"You—what?"

"She's not in the suite she should be in."

"Holy shit, is this cold feet?" Stiles asks, instantly joining in on Scott's level of frantic. He's not equipped to handle cold feet. He's not even equipped to handle last-minute stains or make-up catastrophes, how the hell is he supposed to approach doubts and qualms? Maybe they should go get someone who would actually help the situation, like Derek, because if nothing else, he’s got to be somewhat older and wiser.

"Can you look for her? Can you get some people to help?" Scott asks. "I'm gonna go check in with Lydia, make sure she's okay."

"And oblivious, _please_ ," Stiles begs. This is supposed to be a happy day, the happiest day ever for some people, all bright colors and rice tossing and cake icing and nice flowers, and dammit, it's going to stay that way for Lydia. "Don't tell her Cora's not ready."

He whirls around, ready to look under tablecloths and bathroom stalls, and runs smack dab into Peter in his blind rush. Peter grabs his elbows.

"What's wrong?"

"Your niece is missing," Stiles says. "Well, maybe not missing. We just can't find her. Are you busy or can you help look?" Why is he even asking? He needs to enlist every person he passes in the mission and forget the formality of _asking_. "Never mind. _Help look_."

He doesn't stop to give more instructions just in case Peter starts whining and refusing to cooperate because he's too busy sampling mimosas or shining his shoes, instead breezing by Peter and hoping he takes the second story while Stiles scours the ground floor. He's not exactly great at finding things—he's lost his inhaler too many times to pretend that he is—but he has werewolves working with him with heightened senses of smell just like when law enforcement joins forces with police dogs. They should be successful in finding Cora in no time.

Stiles mutters this to himself as a personal pep talk as he speed walks through the halls, stopping to check even in the most unrealistic of hiding places. He's standing on top of a decorative side table trying to unscrew his way into an air vent when he gets officially stopped by hotel security, and that's when the hopelessness starts to creep in. What if Cora's already halfway across town looking to cross borders and shake off anybody who might be looking for her and everybody's just too late, and suddenly wearing a lopsided tie will feel like the most trivial thing in the world because Stiles will have to break the news to Lydia while she's sitting in her bridal dress that her wedding's off and her relationship’s not looking too good either.

He rechecks the dining hall and nearly has a panic attack while looking underneath one of the tablecloths, sitting there in the curtained darkness under the table thinking the worst, before he remembers that hallucinating in the reception area is probably the least helpful thing he can do right now. He reemerges from under the table, already wondering if the front desk would be willing to give him blueprints to the hotel, when he realizes there's somewhere he hasn't checked at all. The beach.

He doesn’t waste time. He scrambles out from underneath the table and runs to the nearest exit. He’s sweated so much in his suit by now that there’s little chance Peter will ever want it back, both out of nerves and the heat after running around like a headless chicken in the hotel for half an hour, but he’s onto something now. His hunch is confirmed when he looks around the beach and sees, in the distance by the edge of the water, a familiar figure with dark hair sitting on the sand with her eyes on the horizon. 

The steady rush of the sea lapping up the shore is soothing in Stiles’ ears as he approaches, sand already sneaking its way into his shoes. Cora's hair blows in the soft morning breeze where she's sitting, unmoving, on the beach.

"Hey," Stiles says, standing next to her. "You all right?"

He's pretty sure she isn't; she's supposed to be dressed and her hair is supposed to be done and instead she's sitting with her knees up to her chest in the wet sand, but Stiles doesn't want to make the situation worse by pointing that out. He doesn’t know if she’s a flight risk right now, if he should treat her like a frightened deer who might bolt any second or not. She looks up at him, squinting against the sun, and takes in a deep breath.

"Who sent you out here to look for me?"

"Ouch. I couldn't have just wanted to talk to you?"

She sighs. "What do you want to talk about?"

Why she's not inside, why she's not ready, or why she's spending her wedding day breathing in the ocean air are all questions he has at the ready, but he's not sure now is the time to ask any of them. He takes a seat next to her instead, the coolness of the sand seeping through his pants.

"Just if you're okay," he says. He looks out over the sea when she doesn't answer, he listens to the sea gulls as they soar overhead. There's someone in the far distance on a surfboard who's trying his best to stay afloat, and Stiles watches him sink under the waterline, an unsteady blob from far out. "This is a nice beach," Stiles says, grabbing a fistful of the sand and letting it sift through his fingers, rubbing the grains between hands. "Did you see that guy fall off his surfboard just now?"

"I did."

A silence falls between them. Every time Stiles turns to look at her, she's staring hard at the sea, not making eye contact.

"I know why you're out here," she finally says. "You want me to come back inside and get ready."

"That's not true at all." Stiles stretches his legs out in front of himself. "We can stay out here all day if you want to. You can teach me how to surf."

"I'm not going to do that," she says flatly, then, "Have you seen Lydia?"

"She's with Scott." _Unaware that you're out here without so much as a smidgen of make-up done._ "Seriously, are you all right?"

"Is this a good idea?" Cora says, ignoring him. She and Peter both have that same habit, the one where they don't think it's necessary to answer questions and instead breeze right on by to what they think is important. It's either annoying or pretty damn efficient.

"Is this—you mean the wedding?"

"Yes. Everything's so good as it is."

"Yeah, so. Do you really think a wedding will change that?"

"That's the whole point," Cora says, running her hand through her hair, then again. "Why bother if nothing's really changing?"

"Because it's... nice to tell your friends and family that you're in love with someone. And it's nice to commit to somebody special. And it's nice to eat cake and drink champagne all night."

He's not doing this right. Somebody else should've come out here instead, somebody with tact and persuasive techniques at the ready, not somebody fumbling their way through what's miserably failing as a motivational pep talk. He doesn’t know what to say here.

Stiles leans a fraction closer, trying to get serious. "Do you not want to marry Lydia? Is this—are you backing out?"

Cora’s eyebrow twitches. "Not really. It's not that I don't—I mean, I love her like crazy. I just don't—I don't know if we're doing the right thing."

"I don't—I don't think there really is a right or a wrong thing here," Stiles says. "It's love, it's just... weird. Totally weird. And anytime you try to make sense of it, it just gets weirder."

Without meaning to, he thinks about Peter, about how hard he tried to not care about him, and then how hard it was to figure out why he did, and then how it was even harder to accept that he wasn't going to stop caring anytime soon. He supposes he can consider himself lucky that Peter cares too.

"Look," Stiles continues, squeezing Cora's shoulder. "You don't have to go in there if you don't want to. But I think it's pretty great that you two love each other so much." He squeezes her again. "She loves you more than you probably even realize, until suddenly you do. Little stuff, like keeping your nausea medication in her bag because she knows you might need it on the plane."

Cora's frowning. "I don't take nausea medication."

"The point is," Stiles says loudly, not willing to make this about himself right now. "This isn't supposed to be some scary plunge you take out of an airplane. It's a journey you take with someone, so if you're feeling doubtful, you need to go find Lydia and talk to her about it, not sit out here waiting for the sand to creep up your butt."

Cora stares at him for a long time, long enough that Stiles knows he's either said something very right or very wrong.

"I can't believe you said that. That's—you're right."

"Well, yeah. You don't have to sound so surprised."

She shakes her head. "I just didn't expect you to actually say anything that makes sense."

"The compliments just keep rolling in, huh?"

"You're right," Cora says, getting to her feet. “I need to talk to Lydia.”

“You do.” Stiles grabs her wrist before she can walk off. “And listen. Don’t mention to her that you were about to jump ship and run off to Siberia.”

“I wasn’t—”

“All I’m saying is, this little instance of cold feet would make a much better story thirty years from now than today. Think about it.”

The first hint of a smile Stiles has seen on her today pulls at her face at that. She pulls her wrist free of Stiles’ hand. “I will.” She leans down and gives him a quick sock in the arm. “You better get inside or you’ll miss the wedding.”

Stiles very nearly punches the air at that because _thank god_ , there’s still going to be a wedding and Stiles won’t be spending the next twenty-four hours telling disappointed guests to fly back home and trying to find ways to console someone who practically got rejected at the altar. Were it any other occasion, he’d stop to congratulate himself on a crisis well averted, but he probably doesn’t have the time for any self-praise right now.

He watches Cora walk back inside, trying to soak in a few more seconds of early-morning beach breeze while he does so. He's completely drenched in stress sweat and feels one shock away from needing to be followed around by a fainting couch, but other than that, he's _good_. He may've just saved someone's wedding and he feels pretty damn great about that.

He airs out his sweaty blazer for a few more minutes before slipping it on again and heading back inside, where right in the center of the hallway, Derek and Scott are huddled, probably reporting their respective failures, both their faces pinched with upset. Stiles checks his watch and damn, they're definitely cutting today's schedule scarily close. He sprints over to them.

"Did you find her?" Scott asks instantly.

"Crisis averted, holy shit," Stiles says breathlessly, centering his tie. "Oh, hey, Derek. You look tired."

He also looks pissed and particularly grimmer than usual, jaw locked into a deep frown. He folds his arms over his chest.

"You and your consideration for the rooms adjacent to yours are to thank," he mutters.

"What does that mean?"

Scott coughs, looking decidedly pink in the cheeks, and suddenly Stiles is pretty sure he knows what it means. Maybe a little less headboard banging is in order tonight. That, or they have to check who's in the room right next to theirs the next time they're in a hotel. Some stranger getting an earful of Stiles orgasming is a drop in the humiliation bucket compared to Derek being on the receiving end of what is presumably a very thin wall.

"My apologies," Stiles says, although he has to admit, there's a certain amount of personal satisfaction that comes with apologizing about sex, specifically the noise, the passion, and the wildness of it that actually managed to permeate the walls. Also, it's kind of hilarious that Derek ended up being on the other side of that wall. "Consider this: I just saved your sister from making the biggest mistake of her life, so we're probably equal."

Derek opens his mouth, and his eyebrows are furrowed close enough to practically connect them into one angry caterpillar, but before he can disagree with Stiles that no, not even rescuing his sibling's wedding is enough to soothe the trauma his ears and imagination have endured, Peter appears down the hall, approaching the three of them.

"What now? Is all well?" he asks.

"Yes, all is well," Stiles assures him.

"Fantastic, especially since this wedding was supposed to start an hour ago," Peter says, sounding like he ought to be snapping his fingers and wearing a headset. He might be well-suited in the event planning business, which Stiles makes a mental note of.

"It's okay," Scott says. "Everybody's in the hall being entertained by Ronald. He's trying his hand at comedy.”

“Dear god.”

“Can we please put them out of their misery and get this show on the road?” Stiles suggests. “We could split up—half of us go make sure Cora and Lydia are ready, the other half finds a tranquilizer dart to take down Ronald with.”

“Sounds good,” everybody says, and gets to work.

\--

The ceremony is beautiful. Lydia's in a dress that's turned her from Gorgeous into straight up Angelic, and the entire crowd seems to collectively gasp at the sight of her. Cora follows in a shorter, less traditional dress, something unembellished that accentuates her fresh-faced make-up and simple hairdo. Stiles had expected to feel a tad sad, jealous, even—after all, here were people he grew with moving on and loving each other enough to swear to do it forever—but all he feels watching them meet each other at the end of the aisle is pride. Relief, even, that things turned out so nicely.

They say their vows to each other in almost whispers, the words only amplified by the natural echo in the room, and halfway through Stiles reaches for Peter's hand to hold onto it if only just to feel the warmth of his skin. He knows that if he were to sneak a glance at Peter right now, he'd be giving him a Look for being so sentimental, but Stiles can't help it. Being in the presence of so much love and florals and violin music is affecting him, bringing out a side that realizes how incredibly unlikely and lucky it is that all of them are here, watching an unlikely couple proclaim how lucky it is that they gave each other the chance to have each other. Things could've just so easily gone so differently for all of them—they could've all separated after school, they could've all never bothered trusting each other, they could've all given up.

And look at what they would've been missing.

He's actually feeling a little misty-eyed at the end of the ceremony, something he discreetly rubs out of his eyes before he wolf whistles for the first kiss as a married couple, followed by a few loud whoops of approval from Isaac two rows behind him. He watches them walk down the aisle arm in arm, applauding their big happy grins, and hopes more than anything, even if it makes him sound young and naive, that they work forever. That they're in love forever.

He leans over to Peter, speaking under the noise of the applause and the music. "Do you think they'll make it?"

Peter shrugs. "Possibly. There's probably too much sass in that relationship for it to always run smoothly, though."

"Hey, you and I are the definition of too much sass," Stiles reminds him. There might've even been a time when Scott instagrammed a picture of the two of them heatedly arguing over scrabble points and hashtagged it #sassmasters. "You don't think you and I are gonna make it?"

"Hmm," Peter murmurs. "I hope we do."

He grabs Stiles' hand, letting their joined fingers rest between their sides, and they follow everybody out the door.

\--

They all adjourn to the reception hall for food and dancing, where a suited up band is already setting up speakers and saxophones and a group of equally suited up waiters is balancing trays, already prepared to serve the main course.

Their assigned table is fun. Peter and Stiles sit with Lydia's uncle, who appears to have arrived at the wedding prematurely drunk, Scott, Danny, Danny's charming boyfriend, the beehive-haired wedding planner, and a few of Cora's friends, who encourage the entire table to try chasing alcohol with pickle juice. Stiles already knows that his throat is going to be hoarse by the end of the night from laughing, and he nearly maxes out the space left on his phone taking a million pictures of the food, of the guests, of the first dance, of his own slightly tipsy self. 

He ends up eating plenty, but his appetite, although thoroughly quenched after dinner, comes back after Lydia and Cora cut the first piece of cake and everybody is invited to help themselves, Stiles immediately booking it over to the table to get dibs on the section he's been eyeing all night with the extra icing.

He ends up standing in a line for the cake anyway, which would've been fine if not for—

"Ah, Stiles! There you are!" Stiles whips around, wishing it ain't so, but there's Ronald, sashaying his way over to him. He's looking distinctly more red than orange today, which is most probably the universe's way of reminding people already resembling lobsters in color not to lay out in the sun for hours and hours. "I never got to give you my card. Goodness, hungry, are we!"

He points to the two plates of wedding cake in Stiles' hands, chuckling. Stiles wonders if him not having his hands free means Ronald is going to take it upon himself to get up close and personal and slide his business card into the waistband of Stiles' pants. If there is a deity above, Stiles thinks desperately, let it be merciful.

"Only one's for me. The other one's for my boyfriend."

"Oh my, I had no idea! I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, what with this being a lesbian wedding. Gays of a feather flock together, and all that."

"Ronald, I'll pay you a hundred dollars to never say that again."

"So who is he, your beau? Have I given him my card yet?"

Stiles points the plate in his left hand vaguely in Peter's direction, who's currently too busy shining his shoes to gleaming perfection with Isaac's unattended napkin to notice them.

"Oh, he's a real firecracker! Told me I made him want to stop buying toilet paper altogether last night." He laughs, that loud boom of a laugh that nearly scares the roof off the whole room. "How'd you two meet?"

Stiles thinks about the all the other things he'd rather talk to Ronald about, the unpleasant side of the toilet paper business included, and decides to spare him both the drama and trauma of their history. "Oh, you know how it is," he says, vaguely gesturing left and right. "He fell in love with me the minute he saw me."

"Classic," Ronald says, nodding. He doesn't even seem to be aware of the fact that Stiles is, very hard, so hard it's almost painful, holding back laughter. "Well, if you need anybody to MC your wedding when the time comes—"

"Oh," Stiles says, feeling the laughter threatening to choke him now. "We'll consider that. We will."

"I'm also starting to dabble a bit in DJing, so—"

"That's wonderful." Stiles holds up the two plates of cake, cake that he's certain would risk turning stale if he stands here talking with Ronald for as long as this conversation has the capacity to continue. "These plates are getting a little heavy, so, uh. Maybe you can tell me more about this later."

He walks—hurries, really—away before Ronald can spiral off on another tangent, weaving his way back over to his and Peter's table. The rest of their neighbors are gone, empty plates and left behind shoes indicative of them currently dancing their hearts out on the floor. The band is wonderful, the sound of all the brass instruments reverberating through the room.

"Here," Stiles says, slapping the two plates onto the table and taking solace in the fact that Ronald didn't follow him. "I got some carbs for you." He takes a seat and digs into the cake, watching as Peter scoops the dollops of icing off his slice and licks them off his fork. "Still feeling grumpy about being here?"

"I was never _grumpy_."

"You were pretty grumpy in that airport."

"I'm fine," Peter says around the prongs.

"Better?" Which translates, roughly, into: less concerned that everybody here wants your head on a stick?

Peter meets his gaze. "Yes."

Around them, the band is playing something fast and jazzy that Stiles watches Scott try to dance to. Stiles runs his fork through the icing, sliding it into his mouth and enjoying the sweetness.

"It wasn't that bad, right? A little food here, a little family reunion there. Like Thanksgiving, except everybody's in nicer clothes than their pajamas."

"You're right," Peter murmurs. He seems deep in thought. "It wasn't. I think people have begun trusting me again. Even Derek."

Stiles stills, half-petrified Peter's about to break out into a smirk and talk conspiratorially about _how very foolish that is of him_ , because the Peter Stiles knows best isn't used to being trusted, doesn't even know what to do with trust, how to treat it, how to keep it around. But then Stiles looks up at him, and he sees a quiet tranquility there on his face he wasn't expecting.

"It's because of you, in case you're curious," Peter says. "They trust me because you trust me. Because when you're around, I don't feel the urge to..."

"Kill? Maim? Scheme?"

"Prove myself," Peter finishes. "Enhance myself. I feel like I have enough as is."

Stiles doesn't even know what to say; he feels emotionally stunned into speechlessness. He's not used to hearing things like this from Peter, things that are raw and real and _sweet_ , things that are human. It makes Stiles wonder if Peter's changed through all these years along the way and Stiles just never noticed, never far enough removed from the situation to see the transition, to realize that Peter's mellowing out. If Stiles was really responsible. If Stiles makes Peter feel like he doesn't really need extra power and Alphahood and tricks up his sleeve to secure him the upper hand over everybody else.

He digs his fork back into his cake and takes his time chewing the bite, trying to figure out what to say next, or if he even has to say anything at all. Peter knows Stiles cares just as much, hell, that's why they're sitting here at a wedding together with their knees touching under the tablecloth. He watches Cora and Lydia dance as he eats, the happy way they laugh together as they spin and sway as one unit.

"You ever want to get married?" Stiles asks, tapping Peter's calf with his shoe.

"Is this you proposing?"

Stiles chuckles. "No," he says. "Just asking."

"I like things the way they are. I don't need a ring and three thousand fairy lights to change that." Peter's shoulders tilt in a quiet shrug. "But I wouldn't mind."

"Being married?" Stiles asks. Peter nods. "To me?"

"I'm not dignifying that with an answer," Peter murmurs, sliding the rest of his cake into his mouth. "Is marriage important to you?"

"No," Stiles says. "But I do like seeing you in a nice tux."

"I'm in one right now."

"I know. Hard to keep my hands to myself."

"Is that so?"

"Oh yeah," Stiles says, reaching up to loosen his tie. There's not much pull to work with, the fabric resisting. "How the hell did you tie this thing?"

"Here."

Peter reaches out and eases Stiles' tie into a more comfortable position until the knot is hanging loose on his neck. Stiles is randomly aware of the fact that if anybody would be watching them across the dance hall right now, they'd probably think Peter and Stiles were very much in love, the kind of couple who grooms each other and brings each other cake, the kind of couple who were always like that. Maybe Stiles should participate in the bouquet toss, see if there's anything in his future he should know about.

He tries to imagine Peter proposing, if he'd go down on one knee or hide the ring in mashed potatoes or write it into the sky or casually suggest it after sex, something nonchalant along the lines of _I'd officially like to do this with you forever._

"What would our wedding look like?" Stiles asks, letting his mind roam.

"Hmm. Big."

"Big? You want to show off to as many people as possible, huh?"

"Maybe I want to show you off."

"Nice try," Stiles huffs. "You think I can't read you like a book?"

"Fine," Peter concurs. "But I do like a good crowd. Intimate gatherings are overrated." He goes back in for another forkful of cake, stealing it off of Stiles’ plate. "What would you want?"

"Chocolate cake. That's all that matters," Stiles says. "Oh, and good music. I'm talking Cha Cha Slide. Cupid's Shuffle. Thriller. YMCA. Something to get everybody involved."

"That sounds awful," Peter says. "Nobody's going to dance to that."

"Oh, yes, they will. It's like a supernatural phenomenon. Anytime a catchy song with an easy line dance plays, everybody in the vicinity has to join in." Well, maybe not Derek, but people like Derek are not programmed to electric slide. As a matter of fact, if Stiles ever sees him doing so of his own free will, he'll be compelled to catch it all on tape, like a rare unicorn sighting. "You know, if aliens are watching us, that's the one bit of human behavior that's probably confusing them."

"The power of a line dance?"

"Yeah. That, and microwaves. I just can't see them understanding microwaves." He puts his fork down. "I mean, imagine it from a bird's eye view."

"A microwave?"

"No, a line dance. Keep up," Stiles says. "A bunch of people corralling themselves like sheep like it's premeditated all because there's a song playing we all learned the same dance to at some point in our youth. That's freaky."

Peter seems unconvinced, but then again, it seems a little silly to label anything as _freaky_ considering the world they live in. Stiles is kind of happy about that, though. Every choice he's ever made, including that fateful one that led him to coax Scott into looking for half a body with him out in the woods, has led him to here and now, enjoying a wedding with his friends, and even with all the bruises and heartache and anxiety attacks he's experienced along the way, it's been worth it.

Behind them, the band starts playing something slow and soft, a romantic ballad that's begging Stiles to get up and show off his slow dancing moves, or lack thereof. He's never been the sturdiest on his feet or the fastest learner with anything that requires choreography, footwork, or multi-tiered coordination, but it's a wedding and this is that obnoxious time for all the couples to get up and dance all snugly against each other while the singles watch with envy, and dammit, Stiles wants to be on the gloating team for once in his life.

He leans forward and taps Peter on the wrist.

"Do you want to dance?"

"You can't dance," Peter says.

"I'll let you lead."

Peter seems to consider it. He scratches his jaw. "And you'll let me give you pointers."

"Fine. But this isn't a ballroom dance lesson, all right?"

Peter doesn't say anything, clearly not making any promises. He gets to his feet and Stiles follows, heading out to the dance floor. The song sounds a little old, a little jazzy, something an oldtimer like Peter probably has all kinds of fond memories of, and he steps in front of Stiles with his hand outstretched like an actual gentleman ready to start a dance.

Stiles takes it, and fifteen seconds later, he's being ordered and nudged into a very specifically correct position by Peter's insistent hands.

"Lift your elbow," Peter says, pushing it up. "And watch your stance."

"Oh, shut up," Stiles says, purposefully not realigning his feet. "This is supposed to be romantic, doofus."

"Proper form is romantic."

"Dear god," Stiles groans. "Can't we just sway?"

"If this was a middle school dance, we could," Peter replies, obviously unimpressed. "Chin up. Shoulders relaxed."

"I am relaxed," Stiles insists. "Or maybe I would be if my boyfriend would loosen up."

He rolls his shoulders a few times, arching his neck left and right until the bones crack. Dancing is supposed to be foreplay, really, all warm bodies pressed close together and hips slowly grinding, and this prim and proper Victorian ballroom style is not for him. He says as much with his curled lip. 

"Speaking of loosening up," Peter says, briefly taking his hand off Stiles' waist to run under his finger over Stiles’ lower lip, coaxing the grimace out. "Relax. Smile."

"You're bossy, you know that?"

Peter doesn't bother replying, instead focused on tipping Stiles' elbow up and perfecting his form. Stiles has the dancing ability of a freshly born penguin; he will never be the Gene Kelly that Peter wants him to be.

"I'll teach you how to dance properly before your father's wedding," Peter promises. "You'll wow him."

"I'm not dancing at his wedding," Stiles predicts. "I'll be too busy planning the whole thing."

"You'd make a terrible wedding planner," Peter says.

"Maybe, but you know what? You wouldn't. You'd love ordering people around while you do none of the work."

"True enough," Peter says, pulling on Stiles' waist and breaking the rigid position they were keeping, pressing their chests and cheeks together. It feels nice, much nicer than the foxtrot or tango or waltz Peter was trying to show off with a second ago. Stiles can smell the scent of the hotel shampoo on the bit of Peter's hair by his ear, can feel his heartbeat through his chest, and is currently so swept up in the warm romance of their slow dancing that he can't help but think that they must look like something out of a black and white movie from the thirties.

"That was nice, what you said to Cora today," Peter murmurs, pressing his mouth close to Stiles' ear. "About nausea medication. And jumping out of airplanes."

"You heard that?"

"I did. I was down the beach a little ways away. I didn't expect you to handle her stress so well." Peter hums for a moment, considering something. "Hmm. Maybe you wouldn’t be _terrible_ in the wedding planning business."

"Hilarious," Stiles deadpans. "Don't ruin the moment." He slides his cheek against Peter's, leaning into the scratch of his facial hair. "I was thinking about you when I told her that."

"Were you?"

"Yeah. 

Suddenly, Peter's kissing him, and something about it, all firm and slow, feels like gratitude. Like _thank you for loving me_. Or possibly just _stop talking and focus on those klutzy feet of yours instead_ , although if the latter is true, that kiss is a bit more distracting than expected and Stiles ends up stepping onto his own toes.

"By the way," Peter murmurs on Stiles' mouth, hands still curled around his collar. "It wasn't the _minute_ I saw you."

"What?"

"You told Ronald over there that I fell in love with you the minute I saw you."

Stiles raises his eyebrows. "Would you have preferred that I told him the truth?"

Peter shrugs. He gently pushes Stiles outward, which Stiles takes as his cue to back up and spin theatrically, before pulling him back in. "I couldn't care less about Ronald and his feelings. If you want to be real with him and have him fear the outside world, fine by me."

"Assuming he'd believe me when I tell him he married into a family of big bad werewolves, and I happened to meet my boyfriend running from him because he was a murderous nutcase." Peter narrows his eyes and tightens his hold on Stiles' hand. Stiles gives in to his ridiculous intimidation techniques and adds, "At the time."

"Anyway," Peter says, apparently pleased enough to change the subject. "It wasn't the very minute."

"Fine. When was it then?" He pokes Peter in the side. "The very hour?"

Peter grins, the kind that lets Stiles knows he's about to need burn ointment for the slam coming his way. "Mm. Still waiting for it happen, actually. So far I've really just... mildly cared for you."

"You think you're just hilarious, don't you?" Stiles grumbles, and if Peter was even slightly ticklish, Stiles would be using this information to put Peter in a world of hellish prodding and squeezing right now.

Peter doesn't respond, instead whipping Stiles around and lowering him into a dramatic dip that has the elderly couple a few feet away clapping appreciatively. Stiles rolls his eyes and pushes at Peter's unrelenting chest.

"You clearly also think you're a real showman," he says. "Lift me back up, you loser. Who are you, Fred Astaire?"

"No accounting for flair these days," Peter says, pulling Stiles back up into upright position, and yanking him straight into a kiss.

It's a nice kiss, made nicer by the fact that there's a slow song playing and a dance floor around them and that they just made it through a _wedding_ like a normal couple, and hey, maybe they're not so strange when it all boils down to what really matters. Stiles kisses back, tilting their mouths together, and tries to mentally scrapbook this moment as a feeling of unexpected happiness.

Then the song fades away and breaks abruptly into the opening drums of the Macarena. Stiles breaks away from the kiss and Peter's hold and grins, pumping his fist.

"Aw yeah," he says, already getting into position. "Now here's a dance I can do."

Across the room, Cora's trying her hardest to pull Derek out of his chair and get him to participate, aided by Isaac. The lyrics start up, and as if rehearsed, everybody breaks into the routine. Stiles looks over at Peter, who's not joining in.

"Don't know this one, grandpa?" He points to the ceiling. "The aliens are watching."

"Don't tempt me, Stiles."

"Let's not let this opportunity to confuse them slip away," Stiles tells him, slots his hands on his hips, and rotates them just as the song goes _heyyyyy, Macarena!_ and everybody hops a quarter turn to the left. He hollers over his shoulder, "Join the fuck in!"

"Yeah, come on, Peter!" somebody else is yelling, somebody who seems to be Cora, who is all smiles and crinkled eyes when Stiles turns around to look at her, the traces of her former anxiety completely gone.

Peter seems to give in. He's probably thinking that if the only bullying he endures during this trip is people bullying him into participating in a Spanish group dance, things have gone better than expected, and he rolls his eyes and sticks his arms out in front of himself, joining in. Stiles rolls his hips and jumps around in time with Peter, and feels like he's never going to forget this night.

\--

"You know what the only thing worse than being at an airport is? Being _hungover_ at an airport."

Stiles rubs his temples with his thumbs, trying to block out the shrill sounds of people talking over the intercom. Last boarding call for flight 319 to Jaimaica, hurry, hurry. And if anyone has seen a Mr. Rolston, he needs to report to gate 16A. And remember, never accept luggage from suspicious people. Stiles plugs his ears.

Next to him, Peter is popping sunflower seeds into his mouth with the cheerfulness only a man who's never experienced the joys of a pounding hangover headache can manage. It isn't fair. Peter had six vodka shots, three martinis, and an entire bottle of champagne and is still fit as a fiddle. Stiles agreed to one misguided shotgunning competition with Isaac and can now hear sound with his eyeballs.

It was hard leaving this morning, and not just because of the bright lights from every corner and blaring noise in Stiles' ears. As much as he doesn't miss high school and all the terror, death, and essay-writing it brought with it, there is something he misses about that era in his life: all his friends, always together, always in the same town Scooby Dooing it up. Now everybody is scattered on opposite sides of the planet and is working on a life of their own, and Stiles values the moments when they all come back together again to reminisce and drink champagne and make bad choices all over again. Who knows when the next time it'll happen will come?

"It was a nice wedding," Peter says, or at least that's what it looks like his lips are saying. Stiles still has his fingers jammed in his ear. "Could've had less carnations in every corner, but it was nice enough."

"Lydia likes carnations," Stiles says.

"Still a bad choice," Peter insists. "Roses—much more classic." Stiles has no idea what he's saying anymore. Blah blah, I'm refreshingly sober, blah blah, I've never experienced the crushing screeching of a hangover. Filling in his own blanks for Peter's side of the conversation works until Peter looks at him expectantly, obviously waiting for a reply.

Stiles unplugs his ears. "What?"

"I said, are you in pain?"

"Yes," Stiles says, groaning. He's sitting on a tiny chair with armrests that are making it impossible to stretch out and lie down, the loud voice on the intercom keeps chattering away, and his head is pounding. "Yes, this is pain. This is what pain is."

Peter doesn't seem to be listening, instead occupied with rummaging around in the carry-on bag lodged between his legs. Well, fine, if Peter doesn't want to listen to Stiles gripe about hangovers, Stiles won't listen to Peter the next time he rants about So You Think You Can Dance. He'll just go into the next room and not pay attention and purposefully disagree with Peter's opinions on who the worst dancers are—

"Here," Peter says, dropping two ibuprofen into his hand. "Take those. You can dry swallow, can't you?" He smirks, slipping the battle back into his bag. "What am I thinking? It shouldn't be a problem with those throat-related skills you so frequently flaunt."

Normally Stiles would say something along the lines of _stop throwing commentary on my blowjob talents out in public_ , but he's still too focused on the consideration of the two tiny pulls deposited in his hand. Maybe it's because he's hungover and emotionally sensitive because of it, but he's starting to feel like Peter needs to stop surprising him with acts of kindness that are swerving out of the blue at him so often or one of these times, he might just cry.

"This is nice," Stiles says, wondering how else to say it. He pops the pills into his mouth. "Thanks."

"No problem," Peter says, then goes back to reading Jane Eyre, like it really is no problem and he's expecting nothing in return. Lydia was right at the beach; Peter's grown. And Stiles got to see it all happen with front-row seats.

He swallows the painkillers back and closes his eyes, leaning against the headrest and letting the pills work their way through his pounding headache. Even with his eyes closed and his imagination on full blast, he can't imagine what a wedding would look like between him and Peter. What color cummerbunds everybody would wear. Who would end up being Groomzilla. If Stiles would get a giant penis cake for his bachelorette party or not.

He smiles, tuning out the sounds of the airport. If he waits long enough, maybe he'll get to see for himself.

**Author's Note:**

> There was a moment when I was writing the bit where Peter reads in the airplane where I realized that if Peter wasn't a werewolf, he would probably use reading glasses, and the mental image almost gave me a coronary.
> 
> Title is from the novel Jane Eyre.


End file.
